At Strawbridge and Clothier.
Christmas 1998
Christmas 1998 by Tina Garceau
Another Christmas card from Tina. This one has a Santa Claus Conquers The Martians feel to it without the Martians.
This Looks Like a Job for HandyMan!!!
This was a thank you card that I made my Dad who I swear could fix anything. Tina and I bought an old row house in South Philly and decided not to stand in my Father’s way when he wanted to fix something. He really loved tools and loved working with his hands. He was an bottomless well of information and advice. He was also a laugh-riot.
I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already.
Christmas 1997
Early digital collage from Tina Garceau. We got our first Mac in 1997. It was a 7300 which seems rinky-dink particularly by today’s standards but was a very serviceable production machine back then. We also got a scanner and a ton of software. For Christmas that year, Tina replicated what she did with photocopies and stats in Photoshop 4.0. This was a gift card for the nieces and nephews.
The Cheese from Ipanema
Another birthday card from Tina and another obsession of Joe’s. When Tina and I were first dating, there used to be a terrific bar and restaurant called the 16th Street Bar & Grill. It was a nice little place, but the best part about it was the jukebox there with its eclectic mix of music. It had the original Getz/Gilberto classic The Girl From Ipanema. Yes, everybody has covered it and beat it to death, but this was the original! I fell in love with the song and created my own lyrics while we waited for grub. God help her, but Tina indulged my childish prattle by laughing. This card was the ultimate result.
Tina created the card as she usually would, but this time she had color copies made. They were laminated and these three panels were connected with GBC binding.
My Dance Card is Full!
Travel back with us to those thrilling days of yesteryear! Back to a time when only ad agencies could afford a Macintosh! Back when a number 11 X-acto blade was your best friend! Back to the early to middle ’90s!
This is a birthday card Tina made for me back before we worried about pixels and megahertz. She would sketch a rough idea and then exhaustively measure, plan, size, pick retro clip-art and colors, keeping copious notes and wearing out a few proportional scales in the process. She would then head to shops with decent, self-service photocopy machines and make her copies. Back at her apartment, the razor blades and glue sticks went to work. She assembled her illustration, and then it was back out to one of the shops that still did photo-stats. She got film positives shot, and, once again, it was back to her apartment to paint the reverse side with gouache. When the paint was dry, she assembled the card as a bookmaker would a book. Color paper was wrapped around and adhered to chipboard. The stats were wrapped around these pieces with the color paper providing a background for the painted work (kind of like an animation cell.) Not only was it a lot of hand and leg work, it was expensive, too!
This is the inside of the card. At the time I was obsessed with a television commercial that sold VHS instructional tapes for learning the dance craze that had already swept the nation – The Macarena! At the end of the commercial, a wide-eyed blond proclaimed that it was fun and easy to learn the Macarena! Of course, I brayed like a jackass laughing at that. Tina learned early on that if she needed an idea for a card, pay attention to my current obsession!
The original was scanned for the blog. That’s why some of the black photographic image is casting a shadow. The original was on a thick chipboard and bound with a shoelace.
You Knocked My Block Off!
This was a card Tina created back in 2006. We had bought Lloyd this particular robotic boxing toy as a gift although the modern version is a smaller imitation of the glorious original. Tina shot some digital photos of the toy, put in a background and applied the mysterious Joe Head icon on the face of the red robot. You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses?
Crazy Little Shack Beyond the Tracks
Here’s another card from Tina featuring the iconic Joe Head. What’s nice about the Joe Head is that Tina took the photo and did all of the manipulation herself. No interns were involved. She actually owns the icon! It’s kind of unusual these days.
This time around, I was obsessed with Sugar Shack by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs. One of the local oldie stations would play a top twenty countdown featuring top selling records from a particular year. I think the DJ was Hy Lit, and he would provide fascinating trivial tidbits along with spinning the records. On one particular weekend, Hy featured the hits from 1963. Sugar Shack was among them, and although I had heard the song before, I couldn’t get it out of my head this time. What a wonderful, little pop tune. It’s just meant to entertain. Tina took note of my obsession and fit me with a beatnik chapeau and created the shack out of sugar packages. Expresso coffee tastes mighty good!
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