This holiday card is dedicated to, Barbara Ellen Phillips Pearce who was a major influencer to those who passed through her life. She passed away this year of natural causes–this was an unfortunate loss for all who spent time with her.
This photograph was taken in Crested Butte, Colorado in December of 1963. She was getting her master’s in physical education at Western State College. She was working as a server at Kochevar’s Saloon where she met my father who tended bar and was a cook there.
I was having a beer with a friend of mine, Mike Ream, and discussing ideas about the card. He often gives me suggestions about the holiday cards when we reflect on the closing of the year–mainly my mom. Mike brought up the idea of a snowman looking at her, perhaps from another dimension and the theme was set. This idea felt right and somehow incorporating the below photograph because it felt like closure in the best of terms. In one aspect, I wanted to say cheers to her for all she was and the other of her saying cheers to all of you–nothing says it better than her expression, holding a beer and a cigarette while sitting on a keg of beer.
I took a pattern from the Winter Solstice Card and an image from the White Witch card and merged them to create and overlay on the photograph. This was to suggest a themed spirit world where she could be, and this was her attitude from a part of her life that looked blissful. I then deconstructed a snowman card that I created many years ago and took the imprinted tag from it. I pasted it onto one of the kegs she was sitting on—like it was actually tagged.
After morphing the card based on the concepts, I had her purple sharpie pen that she used when she wrote out her gift cards–I had to do the same. I also changed hues of images/sketches to purple and added in the purple text running vertical: Barbara Ellen Phillips Pearce, Crested Butte, December 12, 1963.
