New Orleans-Style Memorial for Rafi's First Guitar
by Beston Barnett
acrylic on plywood and salvaged guitar
4 ft. x 4 ft. x 1.5 ft
Beston: This is one of my most ambitious covers, and also probably my most ill-thought out: what begins as a painting on a wood structure of surprising complexity, made of guitar bits and different levels of wood that you can actually stand inside, becomes flat and loses all detail on a CD cover 4 inches across. Still, it was fun to make. Every part of the guitar gets used except the headstock (the producer, Rafi Benjamin, gave me his baby guitar to tear apart): the back and sides cantilevered at the top, the top added as texture on the face, the tuning pegs as decoration, and the struts as the letter "N". There is a shadow of a guitar and of a head and arms incised into the wood with the dremel tool. I also made some butterfly stamps which I printed on wood veneer and ran around the edges and along the side of the guitar. The whole silly thing is made so you can stand inside it - which is what I'm doing in the photo for the cover.
Scroll below for more miscellanea...
In this photo from before the painting began, you can more clearly see the way the guitar was collaged in and the way some of the pieces interact. Note the bits of plywood glued in which would become part of the painted scene in the mid lower right - totally invisible on the final photo unfortunately.
Here's an alternate cover photo with a bit more contrast (and somewhat less gaudy clothes).
Beston: Here's the postcard of a New Orleans second line parade used as inspiration for the purple-on-orange scene painted in the mid lower right of the final design. I added some friends into the parade: Schwee playing sax with a huge mane of hair in the middle, and Rafi with a funky hat in the lower left.
