Cover art

A little about the album cover: I really wanted a painting—actual art—to adourn my packaging. A few years ago I watched Simon Schama’s Power of Art series (BBC), which is a marvelous journey “behind the scenes” of several famous pieces of art and the artists that created them. Mr. Schama turned me on to the magnificence of human interpretation of reality and unreality, the spectacular mystery of an artist’s ability to paint or chisel what they saw in their mind and coax that image from paints or rock for others to see. Incredible stuff. 

I’ve loved CJ Conners’ paintings since the first time I wrote a story on her when I was working for the local newspaper. Her visions of the natural and fantastical world are breathtaking. When I envisioned a record album, CJ’s art (cjconner.com) was foremost in my mind. I sent CJ a disc of some of the first songs from the record (“Cocoon” and maybe “Space Woman Yeah”) and asked her to consider allowing me to use one of her paintings for the cover of my album. On July 9, 2009 (I just read the printout, so the date is still on it), CJ responded with an incredible e-mail about how my music really touched her. The painting she suggested was one her son loved, “Life Cycle.” Not sure how large you can make my “profile pic” (the painting), but the subject is basically a woman turned into a tree, her form emerging from the bark and her fingers transformed into branches, reaching skyward. CJ also noted, “It has the life cycle of the butterfly along the perimeter—the cocoon, chrysalis caterpillar, and finally the bursting forth of the butterfly flying free—only to be eaten by the toad…yeah, being a butterfly is NOT all it’s cracked up to be. But we humans seem to always want more than we have or at least always think we should have.” 

Wow, CJ absolutely nailed the point of “Cocoon” both visually and verbally! What a fit. I knew this was going to be an extremely special album with an even more impressive cover. The story behind CJ’s involvement in my record is even more layered and incredible, but I’ll leave that for another time…

Thanks, CJ. You are one of my artistic mentors and heroes!