Blue Moons was originally created as an assignment for a Book Arts class at the Corcoran College of Art. The assignment was to create a piano hinge book, a book structure in which signatures are interlaced and held together by rods or skewers in an exposed binding. I chose to illustrate song lyrics that alluded to colors, assigning a different color to each signature of the book.
The 31 illustrations (30 plus cover) were created in under two weeks... an ambitious goal, but a necessary one since the entire book needed to be completed in three weeks. I had also decided that spontaneity and immediacy -- in concept and execution -- were qualities I wanted to achieve in the artwork, so the compressed time frame actually worked in my favor.
Because of the positive reactions to the artwork, I decided to re-create the book in two additional, different bindings: a case bound book and an oversized coptic-stitch binding. The original piano-hinge book and the casebound book are each 5.75" square, while the coptic-stitch book is much larger: 12.75" square, and quite heavy.
The books subsequently found their way into three different gallery shows, accompanied by a full suite of 31 framed prints, and three of the illustrations were selected for the Society of Illustrators 2008 juried exhibition. In 2012, the book will be included in "Byrd/Skolnick: A Tale of Two Posters," an exhibition of artwork that honors the original Woodstock Festival posters (the cover of Blue Moons paid homage to the iconic Skolnick poster) and the artwork they inspired.
