Tina Turbeville
Tina Turbeville
This is a small sampling of endeavors over the past few decades that were simply acts of passion.
A fine deck of playing cards and a memory game
A gift to my friend Constance
2018
54 cards: 2.5” x 3.5”
card box
4-panel accordion-fold instruction booklet
The cards are designed with 4 colors designating suits: red, gold, olive, and green. The numbered cards all have icon pips as well as numbers (1–13). The jokers feature some ducks we saw in Nanjing. The card backs have an arrangement of the 13 pips and the name of the game, “Do You Remember?”
The object of the game is to collect matching memory pairs of cards. Each player in turn calls another by name and asks for a specific memory card. For example, “Constance, do you remember the the ginkgo trees in Tokyo?” If the player asked is holding the card, she must give it up. The asker’s turn continues so long as she succeeds in getting cards. If the player does not have the card, she announces, “I don’t remember.”
NOTE: In 2018, I made several other personalized decks of cards for friends and relatives. I chose to showcase the Constance deck because it was the most unusual.
2016
box: 18.5" x 9.5" x 2"
gameboard: 18" x 18"
4-page rules booklet: 5.5" x 8.5"
printed and assembled in China by boardgamesmaker.com
This is patterned after “The Royal Game of Goose,” which may be one of the oldest board games on record, dating back to ancient Crete. It was played in 16th century royal courts in Europe, and the game has been adapted and played in countries all over the world.
In the classic game, the spiral track contains a series of images of the goose every nine spaces; the winning space is 63, upon which the player must land exactly. Based on medieval numerology, the game symbolizes the cycle of life: 63 represents the final crux of a human life, leading to tranquillity and wisdom; hazard spaces reflect life’s obstacles; and if a player falls on 58, the “death space,” the player must start over in the game.
Tori’s Game of the Dog is based on the dog-year factor of seven with dog images every seven spaces, and its “hazards” are among those dogs face daily. This game was developed for my sister Tori’s 63rd birthday (441st in dog years). All the dogs on the gameboard are based on actual dogs who had been a part of Tori's 63 years.
MOVABLE MORALITY; The Problem With Magnetic North was part of the group show "Rapid Response—artists respond to today's political (un)realities"
2002
three 48” x 36” and one 72” x 36” sheet metal panels
with 750 handmade magnetic compasses
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Moral compasses don’t respond to a uniform magnetism. There lies the problem with defining a value scale. The world canvas is too vast. In the West, the cliché of black, white, and (sometimes) gray is our gauge. And the terms themselves carry loaded meaning.
We sort our view of the rest of the world from our personal one.
What’s black?
What’s white?
What’s gray?
YOUR TASK AS THE VIEWER is to create your own sea of moral compasses. Every compass is repeated in black, white, and gray. Choose from the compasses below and move them to the large canvas above. Draw your own pattern of morality from the issues. You may not agree with the current arrangement you find, so move the offending compasses back to their black, white, and gray palettes if they don’t belong in your big picture.
Tiger Balm Gardens
A Chinese Billionaire's Fantasy Environments
by Judith Brandel & Tina Turbeville
©1998 Aw Boon Haw Foundation
10" x 10"; 216 pages most with photographs
available in English and Chinese versions
The Tiger Balm Gardens are like nothing else in the world. They were built in the 1930s by billionaire Aw Boon Haw to educate overseas Chinese in Singapore and Hong Kong about their culture. The parks were places where people could go and enjoy themselves among statuary, artificial caves, and numerous lifesized tableaux depiciting Chines folklore and Buddhist and Daoist stories.