By February 1964 The Beatles had invaded America and their music was everywhere. But my biggest revelation came the day a friend dropped by with an actual vinyl record. Not one of those yellow plastic kiddie records we were used to, the ones with a single stingy song on each side, but an LP! A “Long Play” record that not only held twelve songs (six on each side) but sported a 12-inch cardboard cover that invited me to “Meet the Beatles!”. I’ll never forget that cover - four mop-topped heads floating in a sea of black. It was a thing of beauty, and although I didn’t recognize it as art at the time, I fell in love with the concept. I was holding in my hands something magical; the most tangible, accessible form of entertainment available to my eight-year-old eyes and ears; a doorway into other worlds. 

 

By the mid 1970’s I had developed a ravenous appetite for music and began collecting LPs for the music. But album covers continued to fascinate me and I began to recognize album cover as an art form in and of itself.  I even devised a way to display some of my favorites. By attaching two L-shaped strips of wood to the wall, horizontally and twelve inches apart, I could slide a record cover between them to display the cover art. 

 

Several years later the basic black record frame came along, and I made use of them to show off my favorite covers at home and in my office at work. By then I had amassed a large record collection, and not just for the music. I discovered I could find fascinating album cover art for a dollar or less by digging through records at thrift stores, garage sales and flea markets. 

 

A dear friend visited my office one day and we got on the subject of making your work the thing you love most. She noticed my Plain-Jane framed covers. and suggested I find unique ways to display album cover art and added I might find used frames at thrift stores. I felt this was a great idea and decided to add my own artistic abilities to the mix by designing backgrounds for the covers that enhanced but did not take away or draw the viewer’s attention away from the original work. 

 

 

 

 

 What I create is a combination of found art, repurposed materials, and my own personal design.