The Album Project

Have you ever bought an album just because of the cover art? I have. I remember buying Björk's Post simply for its visual appeal, without ever having heard the music itself. As a trained graphic designer, album covers have always spoken to me in a powerful way. When done right an album cover can be a poetic distillation of a piece of music, a mood, a moment in one's life. 

​When I began The Album Project, I selected albums from my youth that left a profound imprint on my psyche: Deee-Lite's "World Clique", A Tribe Called Quest's "The Low End Theory", Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", and Madonna's "Erotica" for starters. The project has since grown and I have been commissioned to interpret album art that has been impactful on others.

My goal is to create enough of a likeness so that the viewer could recognize the album, yet have it also be abstract enough so they could fill in the blanks, akin to how our real memory works. My use of fusible beads affords me the opportunity to abstract an image, to employ abstraction's capability to engage viewers in a manner that is layered, cryptic, and ultimately emotional.

Above: "The Velvet Underground and Nico", Fusible Beads, 5.25" x 5.25", 2012

For more album art, click here.