Zack Roybal creates art.
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His hands are the paintbrush. His canvas is the air. His paint is a deck of cards.

The 15-year-old Stebbins High School sophomore is part of a small, but growing, worldwide-reintroduction of extreme card manipulation, or XCM.

Roybal’s talents led him to audition this month for America’s Got Talent, a television show produced by Simon Cowell of American Idol fame.

His audition was a three-minute skit during which he performed numerous variations of card manipulations set to techno music.

Roybal hopes to receive a callback for America’s Got Talent around May 7 to find out if he’ll appear on the slow slated to air this summer on NBC.

XCM is fancy work done with a deck of cards, like those seen performed by casino dealers — only taken to the next level, Roybal said.

“Some call it showing off,” he said as he performed basic card manipulations. “I call it visual art.”

XCM is a demonstration of skill, physics and practice, Roybal said.

In the diamond display, a standard-size deck of 52 cards is held in one hand. Then, the hand holding the deck flips portions of it different ways, eventually creating what looks like a diamond, or two triangles reflecting the other — all completed in one hand.

His began practicing XCM in December 2004. Now he takes a deck of cards everywhere, including school.

All the practice helped get him find wild success at his first performance at Magi-Fest, held in February in Columbus, where he performed for 225 people over two performances.

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