Around a dozen artists will be designing record sleeves for vinyls with artwork inspired by the music within for the “Cover Art” exhibit at local record store Record Box.
“I’ve acquired a lot of records without sleeves,” said Jose Jurado, owner of Record Box. “Those records are not easy [to sell]. Their values go down a lot because there’s no cover. They’re harder to sell without the cover, so I thought it was a cool way to not only sell the records that I have that don’t have sleeves, but also make them more special.”
Record Box began as a refurbished FedEx truck five years ago and eventually expanded into a brick-and-mortar location near the end of 2019, sharing space with Vida Plant Shop, according to Jurado.
Long Beach local and lifelong hip-hop fan Kenneth Cassidy, known as Shark Polansky, created a three-dimensional pop-up style design for a record of the album and titular song “Don’t Sweat the Technique” by Eric B. & Rakim. The record sleeve created by Cassidy depicts a cartoon record player being chased by an anthropomorphized gun and knife.
“Hip hop is pretty much what I was raised on and that’s like a golden era song,” Cassidy said.
Noah Ball, an artist hailing from Compton, created a portrait of Michael Jackson using a scribble technique for a copy of the late artist’s album “Off The Wall.”
“It’s an album that makes me smile,” Ball said. “So when I saw an image of Michael smiling, I felt like that would be perfect.”
The exhibit will open to the public during a reception on Friday, Sept. 9 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Record Box, 324 Elm Ave.
