Artwork

Collaboration: Dan Saland

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“Breath”

12”x10”x5”

Black Indian Soapstone

 "For this collaborative project, I wanted to capture something that was universally felt by all people, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity or religion. Angst is shared among us all and in order to manage the dread and anxiety, we have to accept and ultimately breathe. When Jay and I spoke in more depth about our work on this project, I realized that the focus was not on the struggle of life, but rather how we deal with it. The breath offers that to us all. To breathe is to sustain life."

Dan Saland was born/raised in Northern NJ and has created various forms of art throughout his life. Since 2012, his passion has been stone sculpture. As an existential-humanistic psychologist, he finds many connections and applications between psychology andsculpting a medium that is millions of years old. Dan’s approach is one of patience and humility. The relationship that is developed with each stone and the process of sculpting itself are critical to the creative experience. Similar to the human psyche, sculpting is an evolution of formation and becoming. Dan also finds carving stone quite cathartic as the sculptural challenge leads to deep self-reflection and change.

Kurt Cobain T-Shirt Artwork

Here is the original Kurt Cobain T-Shirt artwork that was released before I decided to scrap the idea completely and go with strictly photo based song covers with no text. It just didn't feel emotional, evocative or even artful. There is something in this simplicity that I do still love, but it wasn't right for Raw Emotions. Raw Emotions needs to feel like it's taking a snapshot into real life.

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Here's the final artwork we went with for Kurt Cobain T-Shirt. I actually took this photo myself of my good friend (and fellow artist), Naomi, on one of my LA writing trips.

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Raw Emotions - cover artwork options

Before the release of the project there we a host of different covers that we explored for Raw Emotions. I honestly still love so many of these, they just weren't right for the song. They felt more like artistic collaborations. These were all created by the BADASS designer Mihailo.

I took some of the designs above and combined them into this sketch. To the right is the digital mock-up of my concept. 

This is the final design we chose for Raw Emotions project. I wanted something that couldn't be defined by an emotion, a person or even a genre of music. Raw Emotions is about embracing ALL of the emotions, ALL of the sounds, ALL of the people and saying "I don't give a fuck, I am who I am."