Neal Shannacappo writes about the serendipitous origins of the cover image for his debut poetry collection.
“Aanii kina wiya! The art on the cover [of Through the Eyes of Asunder] was a serendipitous event that I discovered after one long night of inking some graphic novel pages. I used to use paper placed underneath the page I was inking to prevent ink from bleeding through onto the table I was working on. It’s notoriously difficult to get ink stains out of hardwood. I had been using the same page to “catch” ink for a few nights now, I am at my creative best at night and that’s when I do most of my artwork and writing. So once finished I noticed an unusual pattern to the ink stains on that page, looking at it I thought I saw a person in the ink stains, and turning the page counter-clockwise I saw it clearly. I then took a marker and filled in the t-shirt and made the image very clear.
Immediately I knew I had my image for a collection of poetry I was putting together, and years have passed since that night and now, still, it is that image that best encapsulates the idea of someone who is Asunder. There is also a play on the word and image because it started out as broken pieces of ink that became whole, much like me, the writer that was once a broken person who became whole. And that is what the book is about, being broken, but not staying broken and perhaps not being quite whole in the end because we are never truly broken and nor are we ever truly whole. Instead, we are always aspiring to be both unbroken and whole, so too is that image, as far as illustrations can ever reach for being something more than they are.”
—Neal Shannacappo, author of Through the Eyes of Asunder.
The cover for Through the Eyes of Asunder was designed by Neal Shannacappo and Chantal Lalonde, with art direction by Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm.
Through the Eyes of Asunder is coming this summer from Kegedonce Press!