High Fauxdelity, 3

(Here's an article that appeared in the Athens Banner-Herald, 11/15/07, with one minor correction*)

Pun-tastic fun with album art

By Julie Phillips | julie.phillips@onlineathens.com | Story updated at 10:59 PM on Wednesday, November 14, 2007

For all the great album art out there, there's an equal number of albums that, well, aren't so good.
Play the game of bad band names and you've got a conversation to last for hours.
Dennis Harper's been taking note of such pictures of in-excellence for years, storing up puns and casting a curious eye on creepy, weird album covers.
And so it came to be that "High Fauxdelity" emerged, a collection of paintings rendered by Harper, who's certain they wouldn't do much to sell the supposed records they hold.
Harper, who by day is curator of exhibitions at the Georgia Museum of Art, and fellow artist Jeffrey Whittle, an instructor at the University of Georgia's Lamar Dodd School of Art, combined their efforts - Whittle's collection titled "12 Inch Love Songs" - for a show currently on display at Flicker.
While Whittle doesn't veer far from his lovely, if offbeat style, Harper takes a break from his more serious (though not without humor) egg tempera works for his acrylic "albums."
"It's been a nice [antidote to my tempera work]*," he says, adding the size of the images in the show aren't CD-size, but "the size of 12-inch LP's - I miss that more broad expanse of graphic design - so there's a little nostalgia for that."
Probably the best part about Harper's works are the pun-tastic album titles for records you'd be pretty scared to listen to - "Sexy Organ," "Moody Waters" and "Modern Vibes for Groovy Chicks and Guys," for instance.
"There's plenty of bad album art out there, and people love it," Harper says, admitting to a love-hate relationship with bad album art himself - though the love part comes in no small part from the ideas it inspires.
"I carry around a little notebook for ideas," Harper says. "You know, bad ideas are like bad songs - they pop into your head and you can't get them out."

'High Fauxdelity' by Dennis Harper and '12-Inch Love Songs' by Jeffrey Whittle
Paintings inspired by album art
When: Through Nov. 30; reception 6-8 p.m. today
Where: Flicker Theatre and Bar, 263 W. Washington St.
Call: (706) 546-0039

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 11/15/07

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