Wildwood Tarot

[gregory]

Originally Posted by Debra

Oh dear. Thanks, Em.

If she can't or won't be found, all they can do is to keep on and do their best, then. Boy, does this speak to the need for good, solid, decent contracts.

I think she had one. The art remains hers. And when she said - which I heard that she did - it wasn't to be reissued, she had that right. As far as I know she vanished from the public eye after she said that.

Worthington retains the copyright on the images for the Wildwood, so in theory if he took the same line, it too would never be able to be reprinted.

[Sidhe-Ra]

Originally Posted by gregory

I think she had one. The art remains hers. And when she said - which I heard that she did - it wasn't to be reissued, she had that right. As far as I know she vanished from the public eye after she said that.

Worthington retains the copyright on the images for the Wildwood, so in theory if he took the same line, it too would never be able to be reprinted.

True...before she went missing she did apprently renounce everything. I can't think of any contractual reason why the Wildwood shouldn't have happened.

[OctoberGwen]

Originally Posted by Debra

The nit-picking about the wording of the publicity seems misplaced. Outrage, outrage over a few words?

I'm not nit-picking over wording, I'm annoyed by the intent to have the Wildwood presented as "a unique, fresh and re-energized version of the Greenwood Tarot", which is, as I understand it, a direct quote from Mr. Ryan. In the companion book, no less.

Words convey our intent and express our motivation. It is the idea behind the marketing campaign that irritates me.

Originally Posted by Debra

I don't think it's fair to criticize them for referring back to their original work just because Cheska Potter decided to take her marbles and go home. Some of those marbles belonged to Mark Ryan from the start.

That's fair, but honestly...it's the artwork of a deck that speaks to us and identifies it as that deck. Whoever's vision it was, it's Chesca's art which gives expression to it. That counts for quite a bit in my book.

And in the end, Mr. Ryan could have referred back to his other work in a way that did not make it sound like a piggyback ride.

Whatever. I'll either like the deck or I won't, I need to use it first. I still won't like the presentation, though, and I still won't ever think of the Wildwood as a new version of the Greenwood.

[gregory]

Originally Posted by Sidhe-Ra

True...before she went missing she did apprently renounce everything. I can't think of any contractual reason why the Wildwood shouldn't have happened.

No, absolutely - but I still think it's off to claim it as "the Greenwood, now the Wildwood" - don't you ? And it is all so silly - it is a really nice deck. Tainted - in my view - by this marketing ploy.

If they had said that they wanted to explore the concept further, and issue a NEW DECK (that IS what it is) based on the Wheel of the Year or something like that - but they didn't say that at all.

@ debra - nitpicking ? Over a clear misstatement of FACT ? I report misleading advertising everywhere I find it - from "healthy" fruit juices that contain more sugar than cheap squash to stores who advertise at one price and sell at another. People who use distorted truth as marketing deserve our wrath.

Suppose that person you are aware of, who read the statement "the Greenwood, now the Wildwood" had bought the deck ? Would you have had no sympathy for her in having got something completely different ? How could she know ? She has no Greenwood ! She still has none - but at least she doesn't instead have a deck that wasn't at all what she would have expected, had she ordered before she posted about her excitement about this "reissue" first.

That is an truly awful sentence but you know what I mean.

I say again - the Wildwood is a nice deck. I am glad I have it. But it is being misrepresented.

[OctoberGwen]

Originally Posted by gregory

If they had said that they wanted to explore the concept further, and issue a NEW DECK (that IS what it is) based on the Wheel of the Year or something like that - but they didn't say that at all.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!

Precisely.

[gregory]

Originally Posted by OctoberGwen

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!

Precisely.

Do I get a stuffed toy ?

[Carla]

Originally Posted by gregory

Do I get a stuffed toy ?

tee hee

[Debra]

Hitching his current project to his original project is not enough evidence that the guy's a moral creep. Irritation, sure, this I understand but wrath seems overwrought. If I had a nickel for every dumb sentence on a tarot blog, an amazon.com product description, or a tarot companion book I could buy a plane ticket to Gregory's lair, flog her with a wet noodle, and then steal her decks. Now that would be the mark of a moral creep.

I don't have the Greenwood; I have the Celtic Shaman's Pack. I haven't an ounce of Celtic Shamanism in my bones, and I think it's lovely.

eta: If motives are fair game in this discussion, the elephant in the room is if Potter threw over her tarot work because of a religious conversion. It's strange when someone whose work you love--and whose work seems like an expression of their deepest self--turns out to be a completely different person.

[OctoberGwen]

Originally Posted by Debra

If I had a nickel for every dumb sentence on a tarot blog, an amazon.com product description, or a tarot companion book I could buy a plane ticket to Gregory's lair, flog her with a wet noodle, and then steal her decks. Now that would be the mark of a moral creep.

*spits out coffee*

Originally Posted by Debra

If motives are fair game in this discussion, the elephant in the room is if Potter threw over her tarot work because of a religious conversion. It's strange when someone whose work you love--and whose work seems like an expression of their deepest self--turns out to be a completely different person.

I dunno, to me this feels different than some other examples of what you just pointed out. (Charlie Sheen, anyone? LOL.) I think Chesca's visionary art stands on its own. Whatever she chose to do afterward isn't my business, and I don't think her finding Jesus or whatever is on the same par as how Ryan is choosing to push his new project. And really, who is to say who Chesca Potter is, or why she chose to stop painting, or following paganism, or whatever? We are not privvy to her mind and heart.

OTOH, it's pretty easy to make discernments based on press releases, blogs, and companion books.

[gregory]

My understanding (Em maybe able to add to this) was that it wasn't a religious conversion that caused her to say no more (that came later, the way I was told) - but that she was unhappy at the direction in which Mark Ryan took her work, that she wasn't happy for her art to be associated with his interpretations of it, which I gathered were rather different from her own.

Either way - this deck would have been better put across as the Wildwood and not as something else. Simply that.