Now that the September issue of O Magazine is on the stands, I’m ready to reveal the images created for last month’s O’s Memoir Feast.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The handwritten text you see on the furniture is my grandmother’s. She died suddenly when I was 10. To this day, it continues to be the single-most tragic event in my life. When I was 28, I was given a shoebox filled with a stack of writing tablets that contained my grandma’s secret journals.

As a kid, I saw her as a very happy and jovial person. As an adult, I was introduced to a woman who spent most of her adult life drowning in a never-ending flood of pain and sorrow.

This one was chosen right away, with no additional edits. The symbol of McCracken as a pine tree, reaching for her unborn child really moved me.

I cannot begin to count how many revisions it took to get to this point. This is my favorite one. Her memoir, A Three Dog Life, is heartbreakingly beautiful.

In her essay, Sandra Tsing Loh reveals that she was fired from her job at NPR, but doesn’t offer any details. This photograph illustrates why (and that’s all I’m going to say).

The idea for the waves cut from the book cloth came immediately. The rest of the image grew from there.

In Abigail Thomas’ essay about writing a memoir, she refers to it as a side door into a person. That’s where I got the idea for a screen door. However, as you will see later, the figure leaping through the book was not part of my original idea. I thought the backlit door, by itself, was a very powerful icon in relation to the text. I’ve had people look at this final version and tell me, “This does not look like your work at all.”

It was the art director’s idea to add the figure. I thought it was a bad idea, but rather than bite the hand that feeds me, I bit my tongue instead. This is my least favorite image.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

As a bonus, I’ve included 24 jpegs of mockups that didn’t make the cut. A few of these may look familiar—they were “leaked” to Stickers and Donuts on July 28th.

]]> http://thomasallenonline.com/2008/08/18/o-revealed/feed/ 7 thomasallenonline dscn7200 om_opener_spread om_mccracken om_thomas_dogs om_tsingloh om_opener_spread1 dscn7199 om_mccracken1 om_thomas_dogs1 om_tsingloh1 om_cary om_thomas_memoir dscn71991 dscn7094 dscn7122 dscn7079 dscn7133 dscn7146 dscn7060 dscn7038 dscn7417 dscn6988 dscn7025 dscn7028 dscn7171 dscn7297 dscn7369 dscn7246 dscn7232 dscn7374 dscn7300 dscn7317 dscn7392 dscn7421 dscn7531 dscn7525 dscn7507 http://thomasallenonline.com/2008/04/30/update/ http://thomasallenonline.com/2008/04/30/update/#comments Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:55:14 +0000 Thomas Allen http://thomasallenonline.wordpress.com/?p=52 ]]>

After the most recent comment, I thought it best to take a moment and post an update. I’ve been ridiculously busy lately (a good thing)! Last month, I was one of 10 artists invited to interpret the lewd antics of former NY governor Eliot Spitzer for New York Magazine (March 24th issue/page 27. This has been, by far, the tightest deadline I’ve ever had to work with — 18 hours! I normally work with honest-to-goodness transparency film, but with the clock working against me, I had to rely on the other tools in my arsenal – my aging Nikon Coolpix and Photoshop.

Click here to see the feature.

My site keeps getting “bumped” due to incoming requests.

I have concurrent projects in the works: a brand spankin’ new, limited-edition print for Aperture (sorry, no “preview”), an illustration for Men’s Health, identity/packaging label for a friend’s egg business, a cover photo for an upcoming release by bluhammock recording artist Jim Boggia, a cover illustration for an anticipated prequel (sorry, that’s all I’ll say) from Knopf and a series of new photo illustrations for O (yes, Oprah) Magazine.

Oh, and before I forget, if any of you are looking for something to do in June, I’m scheduled to teach a workshop at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts in Gatlinburg, TN starting June 15th. The one-week class will teach you eveything you ever wanted to know about how to expose and print traditional black-and-white media.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for making my book a success with over 5000 copies sold worldwide! I’d sign them all if I could.

If there are any more delays, I will be sure to post them.