CHERYL BOYCE-TAYLOR

Cover art for celebrated poet Cheryl-Boyce Taylor’s seventh book, Limitless Heart: New and Selected Poems (1997-2022), forthcoming from Haymarket Books.

ELANA BELL

Cover art for books by Walt Whitman Award-winning poet Elana Bell.


 
Elana Bell - Eyes Stones Cover.jpg

Elana’s debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, and brings her complex heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Moroccan Door, mixed media on canvas, 24x30

Moroccan Door, mixed media on canvas, 24x30

The source image for the cover design for Eyes Stones was a painted collage based on a photograph I took while traveling in Morocco in my twenties. I was drawn to the tension between the intricacy and warmth of the mandala design and the cool, beckoning mystery of the doorway. This piece was the launch-point for a fascination with doorways, portals, and thresholds spaces that has informed my work for over a decade. As I consider Elana’s poetry to be a portal for transformation and empathy, I’m especially honored that this image was chosen for the cover of Eyes, Stones.

Cover design for Mother Country by Elana Bell. Image: mixed media on canvas, 24x30”

Cover design for Mother Country by Elana Bell. Image: mixed media on canvas, 24x30”

Mixed media cover art for Elana’s second book “Mother Country,” published by BOA Editions in 2020. The piece uses a similar mixed media technique and focuses on an image of a pregnant woman suspended in an iridescent underwater world.