meet Pamela "Pixie" Colman Smith

As an exercise draw a composition of fear or sadness, or great sorrow, quite simply, do not bother about details now, but in a few lines tell your story. Then show it to any one of your friends, or family, or fellow students, and ask them if they can tell you what it is you meant to portray. You will soon get to know how to make it tell its tale. ~ Pamela Colman Smith, “Should the Art Student Think?” July, 1908

A year after Arts and Crafts movement magazine The Craftsman published illustrator Pamela Colman Smith’s essay, she spent six months creating what would become the world’s most popular tarot deck. Her graphic interpretations of such cards as The Magician, The Tower, and The Hanged Man helped readers to get a handle on the story of every newly dealt spread.

Pixie - the forgotten Bohemian artist

Colman Smith—known to friends as “Pixie”—was commissioned by occult scholar and author Arthur E. Waite, a fellow member of the British occult society the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, to illustrate a pack of tarot cards. 

Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin | revolutionary astronomer & unsung hero

wonder | wander | world kicks off Women's History Month with this homage to unsung hero, revolutionary astronomer, wonder woman - Cecilia Payne Gaposchkin.

While accepting the Henry Norris Russell Prize from the American Astronomical Society, she spoke of her lifelong passion for research.

"The reward of the young scientist is the emotional thrill of being the first person in the history of the world to see something or understand something. Nothing can compare with that experience [...] The reward of the old scientist is the sense of having seen a vague sketch grow into a masterly landscape."

Jeremy Knowles, discussing the complete lack of recognition Cecilia Payne gets, even today, for her revolutionary discovery [via aliterate].