DEV>Set in stone

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Set in Stone
Natural pigments on paper, approx. 17" x 22" 
Prints are like always available in my ETSY shop: www.etsy.com/shop/heliocyan?re…

This is the outer sleeve design for a gatefold sleeve of a vinyl record of a classical music project, which was recorded in the Abbey Road Studios. Commissioned by LUSH for their classical music album project. I was asked to produce a cover which should look old, maybe Medieval/Renaissance drawn, like an old map mixed with botanical/natural history/mythical illustration. They liked the idea of “old, obscure, tea-stained”, mixed with the love to detail which my natural history drawings have. 

It was important to them that it showed “something cyclic" above and below the ground. The cyclic movement of the music will lead from above the ground, up into the air, and via crumbling and decaying stones buried, progressing though the earth and up again, the circle of life. The two sides of the vinyl recording represent both sides: The frone side of the vinyl album is representing the ‘above ground’ side, the back side ‘below ground’. As the recording has an ‘above ground’ and a ‘below ground’ side, I decided to split the artwork into a light and a dark side when printed and folded.
Above ground is represented by the lighter front side, it is featuring the sea, air, birds, and below ground is the darker backside, is soil, roots, caves, fossils, and the pale things living underground. In the background of the front (right hand side of the artwork) I faintly drew a map, featuring roughly the outlines of Dorset, from Lyme Regis to Portsmouth and the Isle of Weight (one of the musical pieces is telling the story of the Agglestone Rock, thrown by a giant at Corfe Castle from the isle). The area around Poole is being placed in the centre of the Fibonacci Golden Spiral, bird songs and background noises for the album were recorded outdoors in this area and it is the home of the company and the orchestra. The main focus are the birds which are important in the recordings. I decided to draw 16 birds, one for each note, two octaves. They lead from the ground to the sky, from the dark side to the light, from foreground to the distance. These birds are storm petrels, a lot of myths are told around these rare sea birds because they are not easily observed. They are so secretive that they will not return to their nest sides unless it is completely pitch black dark night. Even bright moonlight will prevent them from returning to their nests. I decided these elusive birds represent the secrets of the area very well. The dark side is considerable darker and shows thick bramble and roots. Underground, the life circle of the majestic Stag Beetle is shown from the egg to its eventual returning to the air.  

LUSH has very high ethical and environmental standards, therefore I was asked to use only natural pigments for my artwork which I obtained from the Dorset coastline. All paints you can see here are pigments from stones, clay, minerals, earth, coal and chalk which I ground up and mixed with linseed oil and egg white, to use it like egg tempera in the old days. 

The coast in Dorset has an astonishing variety of different coloured cliffs, starting with dark grey, nearly black clay of Lyme Regis, all shades of brown when wandering further east the Jurassic coast towards Charmouth, bright orange in Burton Bradstock and West Bay, and bright white chalk at the Old Harry Rocks. And: fossils, fossils, fossils everywhere... The whole area is a protected heritage site, although collection fossils from the beach is fine. 

© Claudia Hahn for LUSH 

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