• Music: PDQ Bach - A Consort of Choral Christmas Carols

Advent 2011: For Helen L. Kohen

Whoops! Time got away from me and I almost forgot to post today's card today. And when I say "today" I mean "yesterday," because as I type this I'm actually editing a bare-bones post containing just the image below that I threw up just so it would be time-stamped on December 29. Yeah, I could have backdated it, but that would be cheating.

Isn't this an amazing card? I ran across it last week in a Smithsonian Magazine slide show of scary Santas. Personally, I don't think it's all that scary. Sure, Santa is an alligator, but look, he's smiling, and he's got a big bag of fish for that egret. The image was created by artist Michael Blaine and sent to Helen L. Kohen, a former art critic of the Miami Herald who later donated card (along with her other papers) to the Smithsonian Institution. Apparently Blaine made ten of these, but I don't know who the others went to.


Blaine Christmas card to Helen L. Kohen, 1988. Helen L. Kohen papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.