I love music. My work is highly influenced by my favorite musicians and their album covers As a kid I remember picking up a CD and staring at the cover or liner notes and examining the design as I listened to my favorite songs. I know this influenced me in my profession as a graphic designer and I can see the seeds that were planted by old album are intermingling in my current paintings. It has been my dream to create album art for some time now, but other than a local winter compilation album I have not had the chance until now. For the past year I have been working with local musician, Lance Benson, as he has been putting together his latest album, Color & Gravity. Lance commissioned me to create the cover for his 3 song EP that has since expanded into a full 8 song album filled with lovely vocals and beautiful melodies. I am honored to have my work featured on the cover.
Lance has been a friend for years. I know him from around town and because of his music. I have also worked with him at live shows. We are both sound engineers so we have worked together in that capacity, but I also have ran sound at shows that Lance has performed at and that is probably my favorite. His sound is naturally joyful and his music makes you want to dance.
The night that Lance asked me to do his album cover I was doing sound and helping to put on a show at my day job, Headwaters Music & Arts. It was a music show in December, 2019 and Lance was performing. He came to chat with me before the show started and we got to talking about life, music and art. Lance asked to see my work so I pulled out my phone to show him my Instagram. After he perused my work he told me that he was looking for art for his upcoming EP and he had been looking at finding a local artist to paint it. Later on Lance told me that that when he saw the colors on my Instagram grid, before he had even seen any of the photos closeup, he just had this feeling that my art was what he had been looking for.
Lance approached me again after the show and we agreed to meet for coffee in January 2020 to discuss the cover. At the meeting Lance outlined just a few specifics for what he wanted – an eastern pondhawk dragonfly, a lighthouse, and the title, Color & Gravity. He told me he liked blue and green. We decided I would paint the words rather than adding the title after using a design program. I created the piece with acrylic on canvas and painted the edges so it is just a really lovely piece, ready to hang unframed.
This is my second album cover, but the first I did for on artist as the other cover was for a compilation album. Lance and I worked together on this piece – it was his concept but he gave me free reign to create so I got to dream up the design while listening to his demos. I made sure to get the finished piece to him before he started recording the final project and he said “I then was able to have the original artwork in the studio while recording the album to use as visual inspiration. A full circle creative moment I’ve dreamed of doing for many years. What a dream come true!”
Please go check out Lance’s music and listen to his latest album here.
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I loved creating this piece and I am already looking forward to my next album cover! If you are looking for a local artist to create an original piece for your album you can hit me up and we can discuss your dream.
