COVER ART by MICHELLE JONI | 2018 | ACRYLIC + MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS
I had all sorts of ideas for the cover that didn’t work out. I tried to shoot it with a certain rock photographer friend out in LA. He was booked out my entire trip. I begged this one collage artist on instagram, whose art I fell in love with mid-recording, to translate the vision I had. She wrote back that she is admittedly unreliable and I shouldn’t trust her with the project! Hmmmmph. Well, what artist did I know who was reliable, could relay my precise colorful vision, and who's aesthetic turned me on big time? Oooooh right. Das me.
When I realized it was me all along, I got very excited about it. My Granda Florence was a brilliant painter. My mom is a painter when she remembers. I knew I had it in me, and although I’d never done a canvas painting before! I decided this would take place on a juicy thick canvas. The vision that you see on the finished product materialized clearly in my mind’s eye first.
Everything here is a visual from a song, depicting elements of the inspirations and awakenings I had during the recording process, and generally this is what the world presently looks and feels like from my vantage point.
On a day in West H0llywood, a friend recommended I hit LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I spent 3 hours (without my phone) inhaling 3 buildings and many millennia of artwork with all my senses.... I left ready to create my album art!
On my last morning in LA I collected seashells and colorful plastic scraps on the beach, which now live in the underwater scene bottom left. On my second to last sunny day in LA though, I spent hours not at the beach -- but harvesting the perfect collection of painting supplies at the Art Supply Store. The perfect 18X18 canvas caught my attention, I selected my special pop-color acrylics, got an easel and brushes, and I started painting the moment I got back to my apartment in Bushwick. The days and nights melted into one as I immersed myself in the cover art, mixing hues, trying different brush strokes, seeing how much glitter I could transfer from palette to canvas in one glob, coming to learn my own painting style, inventing miniature worlds with my hands.
I photographed it with my iPhone 8 in my backyard for the cover shot, in early morning light, which I obviously stayed up the night before to catch.
Yes, I'm completely turned on every time I see it.