My dentist is a bit of an artsy sort, and likes to send out custom cards to his clients once in awhile. I knew that, but was a bit taken aback by his holiday card design this year:



Not that it's a bad design. It's fun in a pulp-cover sort of way. The art was done by a San Francisco-based artist named Rene Garcia Jr., who does a lot of interesting pop-art and portraits. But it's not exactly what I expected as a greeting card from a dentist.

That was nothing, however, to my surprise this morning, when I leaned back in the dental chair and discovered that the design was on the ceiling. In glitter.

The original is a 60x60 or so art piece done with glitter glued to wood. It sparkles at you in the light. The woman and tiger cub are nearly life-sized. And it's hung on the ceiling in the main dental area, visible to all the patients leaning back in their chairs with their mouths open, including the ones who arrived at 8 AM and haven't had any coffee yet.

"Yeah," said the hygienist, "he thought he'd better send that out as his holiday card this year, so everyone would be familiar with the design before they got here."

I like the guy more and more every time I go in there.