Artists' Postcards: Holiday Series

The exhibition Artists' Postcards: Holiday Series featured seven small, original works of art, especially created for holiday postcards. Artists' Postcards was founded in 1977 by Joan K. Davidson to promote and distribute the work of living artists in the popular and inexpensive postcard format. The works, all standard postcard size, were the first holiday images that Artists' Postcards had published. The nonprofit organization had commissioned and published more than 90 postcard-sized works by living artists, in 2 editions. The Drawing Center exhibited the first series of works for Artists' Postcards, and the special holiday exhibition ran concurrent with The Drawing Center's exhibition Musical Manuscripts.

The holiday images included Carol Wald's collage of turn-of-the-century Christmas toy images, Fanny Brennan's oil of an evergreen crowned with a star, Robert Kulicke's floral still life Hope, and Russell Drisch's collaged and hand-colored photograph S.S. Good Fortune. Christopher Hewat's gouache of a ribbon transformed a postcard into a gift package, and Carol Anthony's landscape presented the traditional Christmas tree in its natural habitat. All of the works were carefully reproduced in four-color lithography. The card by Lella and Massimo Vignelli, available in glossy blue or green, was hand punched with a "railroad conductor's" punch specially made in the shape of a star, thereby incorporating both sides of the card in the design. All the artists had previously created works for Artists' Postcards. Each postcard was available in a package of ten for $3.50 at The Drawing Center.