Blue Rose

Paula Gibby belongs to the small-edition collage tradition, the same handmade current as Arnell Ando's work, and the Blue Rose is her floral statement: rose imagery and botanical symbolism carried through a full seventy-eight card collage deck, produced in the limited quantities that make her decks collector's quarry. The blue rose itself is the deck's thesis flower, the bloom that does not occur in nature, standing for the longed-for and impossible, which gives the botanical theme an undertone of yearning most flower decks lack. Small-press collage decks circulate by devotion: traded, hunted, occasionally reissued, their value as much in scarcity and touch as imagery. Gibby's compositions work the vintage register, old engravings and painted blooms recombined. It suits collectors of the handmade collage lineage, rose gardeners with a mystical streak, and readers drawn to symbols of the unattainable. Those who want botanical decks in print and in stock have the catalog's living-flower shelf; this one is for the hunt.