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33.3 Artists Revisit 33.3 Album Covers

9:44 p.m. · January 5, 2011 · by Dan Nishimoto

The waxing and waning of vinyl culture has been a cause célèbre for visual artists, as well as audiophiles. From Dublab's Up Our Sleeve exhibition of art using 12-inch record sleeves as a canvas to the Sleeveface meme of incorporating album covers into staged photographs, LP art is not just being celebrated or memorialized, it is also being re-contextualized for the present. Artist and designer Dana Lechtenberg is following suit with his 33.3 Art Show of re-imagined album art, which opens at the Cup of Joe coffee shop in Cedar Falls, Iowa on Saturday, January 8, 2011.

The exhibition features 33.3 artists and designers from across the country. Lechtenberg's 4-year-old daughter is one of the artists and presumably the one-third participant. Each person chose an album and was invited to create a new look by using their choice of medium, but within the uniform dimensions 12" x 12" -- roughly the same as an LP sleeve. The works include a wide range of albums and styles. There are familiar albums with art that mirrors the composition of the original, such as Roxy Music Country Life">Roxy Music's Country Life as done by Stuart Patterson or the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds as done by Andrew Kolb. There are also complete reinterpretations, like Pat Kipp's tattoo-ish take on the June of 44 album Tropics and Meridians or Rachel and Adam Little's handcrafted approach to the Fleet Foxes record">self-titled Fleet Foxes record.

If you're not in the area code of Cup of Joe, have no fear: the 33.3 web site has 33 of the entries (as of publication) complete with didactic information and artist statements. A few more highlights include:

• Prince's Purple Rain gets the text + visual treatment by Mike Nelson.
• Blues Brothers' Briefcase Full of Blues is transformed in a literal way by Adam Hansel
• Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream and Other Delights almost goes Darger courtesy of Tammy Duncan
• Had to have a Lego: Beck's Sea Changes by Chris Corkery
• Lionel Richie's Hello gets an honorable mention as Zara Gonzalez Hoang almost makes him look quasi-?uestlove

Please visit the 33.3 web site here.

[Image: The Smiths' The Queen is Dead by Luke Bott]

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