Reno Tarot Project
Reno Tarot is a decade‑long visual record of Northern Nevada. The project reimagines the tarot through paintings rooted in Reno, using real people, regional landscapes, and lived experience rather than pure symbolic abstraction.
Each painting documents a specific place or person. The land is a living witness. The Truckee River, Pyramid Lake, Donner Lake, Fallon, Reno --these places and the people who live here become the archetypes. The work is shaped by the geography of the region, especially the movement of water through the land, and reflect one-term observation of place, relationships, and change.
This is not (yet) a commercial tarot deck. It is a sustained visual archive, built layer by layer, revisited and revised over years. The record includes portraits of Nevadans, sacred and overlooked landscapes, and the artist's own changing vision. Paintings completed after 2025 were created following bilateral retinal detachment which permanently altered how seeing works.
Reno Tarot continues. New cards are added each year. Older works are revisited and deepened. The record is not fixed. It is built by continuing.
This project was supported, in part, by the Nevada Arts Council, a state agency, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, and the state of Nevada.
Support & Engage
Reno Tarot is self-sustained outside institutions. Your direct support keeps the work moving — funding materials, studio time, and the long arc of this project.
Ways to be part of it:
· Fund the work: Reno Tarot Gofundme
· Follow the process: Instagram @mallorykatecreates
· Share it: Tell someone who needs to see real, place-based visual work.
This project lives through engagement. Know it. Live it. Help build it.
— Mallory Kate
Works to Date
A number of cards from the Reno Tarot project are considered complete at this time. These works represent moments where visual language, subject, and structure have reached a resolved state. They are included here as reference points within a larger, ongoing body of work rather than as a finished and complete deck.