Having only ever glanced at the artwork for Bon Iver’s self-titled album, I’ve had an embarrassingly simple understanding of it — that is, until now. Before, if you had asked me about it, I probably would have shrugged it off as a beautiful, yet cliche-y watercolor representation of somewhere in Wisconsin that Justin Vernon probably hides out it in.
As it turns out, the cover for Bon Iver is much, much more than that. Designed by artist Gregory Euclide, the art is a stunningly intricate piece of work that is well beyond your average watercolor. His attention to detail creates a world full of new and wonderful discoveries at every corner.
In fact, I’ll go as far to say that Gregory Euclide’s work is on a-whole-nother level from your average, cliché watercolor.
Case in point: did you have any idea that the cover to Bon Iver is a picture of a three-dimensional work of art? And not a hackneyed one, either. I, for one, had no clue about this until a couple of hours ago. It makes sense though — as Euclide once put it in an interview with the blog My Love For You, he’s “not a big fan of the flat.” 3D art is his specialty and, in my humble opinion, he is a wizard at it. Just take a minute or two and watch some of the video below — if you’re anything like me, it’ll blow your mind. (The vid features little to no sound so I recommend pairing it up with, what else, some Bon Iver.)
So, how does an artist who focuses on three-dimensional art get chosen to create an album cover - something that’s distributed in flat, unexciting, two dimensions? And then how does he approach the challenge?
Well, a series of “I know someone who knows someone who said we should meet”-style scenarios led to Vernon checking out and buying a piece of Euclide’s work, so that later, when the time came to find a cover for Bon Iver, Euclide got the call.
The process started with an email Vernon sent Euclide detailing a whole bunch of what the band like from his paintings, and what they didn’t want on the cover. Despite the directions, Euclide (as he explained to Pitchfork) found the experience of working with Bon Iver to be contrary to his usual history with commissioned works… in a good way: “I didn’t feel like I was too directed because it was all based on stuff I was doing anyway.”
Next up was a conversation with the band about themes they wanted to explore, “[Justin Vernon] wanted to deal with transformation a lot. If the last album was about loss, then this one was going to be about birth. And a lot of my work deals with growth and decay; there’s this lush green stuff, but it also feels like it’s breaking down.”
From there, Euclide was able to jump off and start working. He decided to stick with what he knew — three-dimensional art. But for each literal layer to the piece, there’s a metaphorical one to match. The cover (as seen in the videos above) features everything from melted mountain water/snow to pine cones from the area of Wisconsin that Justin Vernon is from. Even dirt makes a cameo on the canvas — all in homage to the wilderness associated with Justin Vernon and his band.
But the symbolism in this work does not stop there. Euclide acknowledges the inspiration that (cliche-y) watercolors have given him in his own unconventional way: “I’m putting these totally kitschy, idealized landscapes inside of these paintings that are just torn apart. I include all this garbage in them — the Bon Iver cover has found styrofoam in it — and I cut them up to expose the illusion of those types of paintings.”
P.S. What album cover are you most looking forward to in 2015? Why? Let me know: [email protected] (If you have an honest answer to this then I sincerely applaud your imagination.)
romaincrisis
gamechangershow
yousharknotpass
turnnoffyourmind
pixelskylines
