LP Art Exhibit at the Lake County Discovery Museum

Explore sixty years of outstanding album cover artwork in the special exhibition, LP Art, at the Lake County Discovery Museum. Since the conception of album art in 1939, it has become an integral part of music and popular culture. See the cover evolve from early jazz sleeves to iconic rock covers to interactive cd booklets. View some of the most memorable and inventive album covers of all time by artists like Frank Sinatra, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Beck. Relive a generation where record shops were like art galleries, and even bad music was graced with beautiful artwork.

The exhibit contains sections on rock, punk, jazz, funk, hip hop, pop, novelty and children's records. It also features highlights from the remarkable catalogues of The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Pink Floyd. A special area focuses on album covers by famous visual artists such as Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Takashi Murakami and Robert Mapplethorpe. The exhibit also includes the history of the various audio formats and packaging that were used to distribute music over the years, including Edison phonographic cylinders, records, 8-tracks, cassette tapes, Compact Discs (CDs) and MP3 files.

The exhibition features numerous hands-on activities for children and adults. In the Cover Art Studio kids can design their own album cover or interpret a classic such as Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” At the Cover Shoot visitors can take the stage with various costumes and props and get in touch with their inner rock star. Adults can get in on the fun as they try to recall band logos in our Album Art Alphabet game. A free audio tour provides a soundtrack for visitors as they explore the exhibit.

LOCATION
The Lake County Discovery Museum is located in the Lakewood Forest Preserve on Route 176, just west of Fairfield Road in Wauconda, Illinois.

HOURS
Monday – Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.

ADMISSION
$6 for adults and $2.50 for youth ages four to 17. Children three years and under are free. Seniors are $2.50 after 2 p.m. On Discount Tuesdays, admission is $3 for adults, and youth 17 years and under are free. Admission is always free for museum members.

Click here to download a coupon for $1 off Museum admission.

Call 847-968-3400 for more information.

The Thieves of Kailua - CD project design - Brian Bosworth

When we began tossing around ideas to create an album cover for 'Thieves', Jason had already self-released the record a year or two beforehand. He was burning the discs himself and sewing these great little burlap sacks with wooden buttons to slip them in. He came to me because he's rifled through my sketchbooks for some time and thought my drawing style would work for his vision. By that point he already had a list of elements that he was drawn to (tropical sunset, mountains, jungle, beach), and a certain aesthetic -- it was important for him to retain a hand crafted, organic feel. The aesthetic I was drawing on came from many places: pin up girls, disney background paintings, 60s tiki style, japanese woodblock prints. I was also looking at jungle plants and tropical birds, and was sketching the whole time. All of the drawings on the cover and the inside flaps were done by hand, but I put everything together and messed with colors on Photoshop (with a little help from Illustrator). The burlap pattern on the sleeve came from a scan of the same material he used for his homemade version. I think I'm drawn to actually listing personal references with musicians I'm working with -- stream of conscious lists of themes, memories, objects or whatever they drew on to create the music -- and sneaking as many symbols of these as possible into the album art. It's a great way to drum up a bunch of wonderful and legitimate material to dig into and work with.