Past is Prologue 2006
Past is Prologue started life as the self-released Sunrise Projector in 2004. The cover art represents one of my earliest forays into combining graphic and photographic elements. I was really interested in working with negative space and I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were peering through a partition into a different reality. I wanted the between the graphic and photographic elements to feel like an organic, living element so I painted brush strokes and dripped ink onto paper and scanned the edges in (fig.5). I collected old magazines and had found the picture of the girl (fig.3) and wanted to build an image around it. I also wanted to include an oak tree as an homage to my home so I hiked across a ranch outside Fairfield to get a shot of a solitary tree on a hill (fig.4).
Around 2006 Merck records approached me about re-releasing the album with some new tracks and I saw it as an opportunity to update the artwork and title. I had been experimenting with new techniques and more dense arrangements musically and wanted the artwork to reflect that. My main goal was to introduce some more color, refine the edges of the illustrative elements and introduce some water themed elements.