Now that my son has managed to change the banner on this website, it seems appropriate to give a shout out to those who created the cover art for the books you see. The covers of three of the titles in the banner were from photos by my friend and Catawba Valley Community College colleague, Clayton Joe Young. The photographs on Paternity, Something Knows the Moment, and For One Who Knows How to Own Land were all taken by Joe. You can see more of his work, including the photographs from our collaboration, Country Roads on his website. The photos from our collaboration have been on exhibit in the Bethlehem Library, the Burke County Arts Center, and at CVCC, and we will be on exhibit later this fall in the Caldwell County Arts Center. They will host a reception including a reading from the poems on November 1.
The cover for Eye of the Beholder was created by Valerie Macewan, editor of Dead Mule. It is a photo of one of her multi-media, found art creations. She calls herself an assemblagist, defined as “one who provides the redefinition of displaced ephemera and found objects by allowing for the movement of spatial and universal concepts via placement, thus creating the intent of objects previously limited only by the influence of space and time.” She says, “Assemblage Art re-purposes man’s ephemeral detritus and gives it new life.” Some of her work can be seen on her blog.
The other cover in the banner, The Fractured World is a photo I took of my front walk and M. Scott Douglass digitally enhanced by adding a grainier texture to what was a smooth, albeit cracked, walkway. Douglass, in fact, did the cover layout for all of the Main Street Rag books. Diane Kistner did the layout and tweaked the color for For One Who Knows How to Own Land.
Of the covers not in the banner, Country Roads is, of course, a photo by Clayton Joe Young; The Nature of Attraction is a charcoal and oil sketch by Antoine de Villiers at antoineart.com; Shadows Trail Them Home is a photo by Pris Campbell’s friend, Shae Leighland-Pence at shaeleighland.com; and The Persistence of Faith is a photo taken by publisher, Ahsen Jillani of his wife Lisa’s shadow on my driveway when I lived in Charlotte.