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Season's greetings from FrederickBy KAREN GARDNERAssistant Family EditorSherry Kemp likes to add a touch of Frederick to the Christmas cards she draws.The Frederick artist designs and sells Christmas cards with local scenes. This year, she has Santa Claus in a red suit skating across Culler Lake.Last year, Santa was in a blue suit, carrying a tree and a bagful of goodies before a snow-covered City Hall.This is the third year Ms. Kemp has designed Christmas cards using a Frederick theme. Other artists, local and not so local, are dressing up Frederick's legendary clustered spires in Christmas greenery, or featuring other favorite Frederick trademark scenes in holiday style.“The whole idea of a Christmas card series came about because of a postcard series based on Sam Claus, she said. She designed a series of postcards for National Postcard Week using the Uncle Sam Santa Claus made popular during the Civil War.For Christmas 1991, Ms. Kemp carried on the idea of a Victorian-era Santa, using a bearded old man in a long robe. Red was only one of the many colors Santa’s robe could be. And the robe was knee-length, not the hip-length red coat that came to be popular in Coca Cola ads in the early part of this century.The cards are full color, using pastels and dye markers, and always show a wintry Frederick scene. This year’s card shows Santa wearing old-fashioned skates, slicing across a frozen, moonlit, Culler Lake. His bags and lantern are placed by the stone fountain in the center of the lake. Two Canada geese are watching nearby.“I had a bit of trouble this year because I’ve never skated,” Ms. Kemp said. But that didn’t stop her from creating the scene in her mind. “You just use your imagina-tion, and fake it. He probablyborrowed some kid’s skates.”She didn’t need to fake it when it came to the geese, however. Geese often show up in her pictures. “Somehow or other, there's been a little animal in each of the cards,” she said.The 1992 card, showing Santa before the City Hall fountain, also shows Santa glancing at a reindeer, wearing bells around his neck and holly in his antlers. But this reindeer looks strangely like the whitetail deer so common in this area. And in the first card, showing Santa carrying a tree and pulling a sleigh full of toys, two rabbits scurry about on the snow-covered mountain, overlooking Frederick's clustered- — spires. That scene, Ms. Kemp admitted, is a composite of local landmarks.The legendary clustered spires show up in Christmas cards by other artists. The newest card is by Rachael Peden. The Farnham, Va., artist was sought by Karen(Continued on Page 4)This is the third year Sherry Kemp has designed a Christmas card using a Frederick theme. Her full color 1993 card shows Santa wearing old-fashioned skates slicing across a frozen Culler Lake (above).The newest card featuring the legendary clustered spires was commissioned by Karen Plemmons and Sandra Fout, merchants in Everedy Square and Shab Row, and was produced by Virginia artist Rachael Peden. The card features a line drawing of the spires with red and green Christmas touches (left).Artist Colleen Remsberg issued two cards the past two years; both are still available. Last year’s full color design was a reflection of Trinity Chapel in the window of a house located at the corner of Church and Record streets (below).
Newspaper Details
Frederick News Post Leader
Frederick, Maryland, US
Wed, Dec 15, 1993
Page 1
Full Page
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MD, USA 18 Dec 2024
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