PAROT TAROT SPAIN SUMMER 2019

photography Darrin Noble 

PAROT TAROT

Parot Tarot is a different kind of divination evening. It started with a Tarot reading on a full moon last autumn in a subtropical paradise garden in Los Angeles. I was staying at the Tom of Finland Foundation in Echo Park to make an insitu ceramic monument for the garden, known as the Pleasure Park. During this time, Echo Park resident John Parot gave me a night-time Tarot reading in the garden. Having my fortune read amid lush night-time vegetation and under a full moon was a kind of magic.. After John delivered his reading in this atmospheric place, we realised that the place and time of your Tarot reading are as important as the reading. We devised a Tarot evening experience for pre-booked guests by night in the garden.

Over four nights in October John gave readings to 24 pre-booked guests in a small cabana curated with artwork and artefacts. I greeted the guests on arrival with drinks and refreshments and led them down to the cabana at the time of their reading. We produced personalised sheets recording the reading, custom artwork and a zine for guests to take away. With elements of a candle-lit art soireé, informal social gathering and personalised divination, realised in a contemporary, queer witchy aesthetic, this is an innovation on the conventional formula for fortune telling.

We want to bring this concept to Ibiza and Sitges in August 2019.

We offer a curated evening of divination for a limited number of guests in a curated space with artwork and artefacts available for sale. Parot Tarot can take place in a terrace or garden of a small hotel, restaurant or bar,. We can also come to a villa for an evening of divination, entertainment and enlightenment for a party of guests.

HOW IT WORKS

Before the night

1. Publicise the evening on social media. Limited number of reading slots.

2. Guests receive email confirmation of the time and place of their reading

On the night

3. Guests arrive 15 minutes before their reading slot. They are greeted by the host and offered a drink and refreshment in the comfortably furnished waiting area, also curated with artwork, artefacts and music.

4. The guest is escorted to the reading place by the host for their Tarot reading with John Parot.

5. The reading takes 30-45 minutes. Guests leave with a personalised sheet featuring original artwork as a record of their reading, and an original zine made specifically for the evening.

What we need

We need two spaces (indoor or outdoor) for this evening: a waiting area, and a reading place. The waiting area needs to be physically separate from the reading place. We need comfortable seating for around 10 people where guests can relax and wait before their reading, and gather to share their experiences after the reading. The reading place will be a smaller room or space to accommodate two chairs and a table where the reading takes place. It will be a private and secluded place where the guest and John consult the cards. We will need basic furniture provided at the venue. We will supply and style the spaces with other materials, including divinatory artefacts, artwork and furnishings.

ABOUT US

John Parot

Los Angeles based artist John Parot was gifted his first deck at the age of 16 and has been reading for over 15 years. His intuitive empathy and personal manner with all his Tarot querents make them feel confident, informed and empowered. He was born in Chicago, Illinois. He has a B.F.A. from Northern Illinois University and a M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art. John has exhibited all over the United States, with artwork shown at Bellwether in Brooklyn, Jack Hanley in San Francisco, Locust Projects, Miami, and galleries in New York, L.A, Chicago, Dallas & D.C. In 2002 John was chosen to participate in Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, 12x12 exhibition series. His work has been written about in the New Yorker, Time Out Chicago, Frieze and has received various online reviews. He is a recipient of a full scholarship from Skowhegan and in 2004 he received grants from the Illinois Art Council, and Artadia.

Rowland Byass

Spain-based landscape architect and ceramicist Rowland Byass was born in Nottingham, England. He has a B.A. in English Literature from Cambridge University and an M.A in Landscape Architecture from Sheffield University. He has designed and made several gardens and green roofs in London and other landscape projects in France and India. In addition to landscape design, he has developed a ceramic practice of hand built sculptural planters. Since 2016 he has made ceramics and completed art residencies in Berlin and Los Angeles. His ceramic works and and installations have been exhibited in in Los Angeles, USA, and Altea, Spain. In 2017 he was artist in residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation and had a solo ceramic installation at the Tom of Finland Foundation and at the Berendo Gallery in Silverlake, Los Angeles. In 2018 he returned to the Tom of Finland Foundation to complete a commission for a memorial shrine in the garden of the Foundation.