AUTHOR'S NOTE
The character of the Inner Mask had occurred to me while I was trying to think of a final project for my college art degree. I started pondering the life of the Elephant Man, the tragedy of a surface that drew such abuse, countered with an interior that went unseen, and the idea of the Inner Mask sprang suddenly into my mind. I tried to think of a project I could do about the Inner Mask, something I could make for my thesis, but I couldn’t think of anything. Because of time restraints, I had to do something else for my thesis, and I put the idea of the Inner Mask aside, not yet sure what it had to say.
After college came a difficult stage of my life; a stage where I was searching for where I belonged. I knew I didn’t belong where I was from, and I had no idea where else to look. The internet was still version 1.0 and there was no Tumblr or Facebook yet; flashlights that exist now for finding one’s tribe. I was wandering the world looking for myself. I was in the Czech Republic when I remembered the Inner Mask, and suddenly it came to me: “The Tarot of the Inner Mask.” I knew I had to structure the deck in terms of Major and Minor Arcanas, and within this format the Inner Mask started to speak to me in a way it never had before. This project was a source of comfort, a way of putting my intricate feelings about myself, where I was not just in space and time but in myself, into a framework, a relationship with other images and a way of making sense. There were times when ideas for images were pouring out of me, all kinds of transformations and circumstances for the Inner Mask and its companions to find themselves in. I was exploring the Inner Mask in all its dimensions. Drawing the images was enormously engrossing and, as art is at its best, healing even when the subject of the images was dark. I continued making images for this deck as I traveled through Europe, China, Japan, and back to the •S.
After a few years of wandering the world, I came home, got a degree in digital art (also an act of wandering), and a job in Silicon Valley making art for games. The project went in a box during this time, as I settled into a self that seemed healed; a self that seemed enough. I tried making a 3D animation about the Inner Mask during my degree, but I think that animation turned out somewhat confusing. There are some things I like, and a lot I don’t, about how it turned out. If you’re curious, you can find those on www.vimeo.com/caliway.
Needless to say the animation satisfied neither character nor myself, and the original project, the deck of cards, didn’t stop bothering me from inside its box. Finally I realized that if I didn’t do something about it, the project would stay in that box forever, and none but me would ever know it existed. So I made the time to compile all the images, nail down their order and toss out the cards that didn’t fit the structure, and then the enormous task of putting my notes about each image into what I hope is comprehensible text. Going back over these words and images, I was brought back to many difficult feelings, thoughts from when I was lost. Editing this project was not only long, but riddled with resurfacing, complex emotions I hadn’t dealt with in a long time. I think that completing this project was a work of complicated self-therapy, and it is my hope that this project can be used as a therapeutic tool by others, wherever they are at in their process of becoming, of finding themselves, of finding the way towards “home.”
This is not a colorful deck, its not very happy and its not vibrant like most decks. But this deck is being real to what it is: a reflection on a dark period, and a guiding light out. All my art since finishing these cards has been more colorful, and I cannot help but think the Tarot of the Inner Mask helped me get through the period of lostness, so that I could arrive in the place I am now. If I could give you anything, it would be a lantern like that, a lantern which does not exist yet: a way to talk about things you cannot say, a companion who has been through things like you have, a mirror which reflects not the surface, but the larger world beneath.
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