TOWN’s first cover inspires new art celebrating 15 years
When discussing our anniversary issue’s cover, I suggested using covers and pages from TOWN over the years to recreate the first cover. I’d been dabbling in collage art and was having fun deconstructing images to make new ones. Then I realized that our first cover was the amazing collage art of Judy Verhoeven and I was a little intimidated. I respect Judy’s art so much and didn’t want to insult it or degrade it. The team loved the idea, so I moved forward.
After adjusting the scale to fit our current page size, I gathered and printed previous covers and gathered overflow physical copies from our archives. To keep the picture as close to the original as possible in terms of composition, I printed a faded version of the scaled art and glued it to a board to serve as a template. I used additional copies of this print to create stencils and scaled our previous covers up and down to get various textures along with complete images.
The whole process was an experiment. There were aspects of the original art, like the body of the water tower, that looked more organic. To achieve a similar look, I ripped the paper pieces rather than cutting them precisely. For anything with a clean edge or line, I used a precision knife. I tried to achieve any shading by cutting or ripping smaller pieces from slightly darker colors I found within the covers or pages of TOWN. The only paint I ended up putting on the final image was to give a tonal wash to the sky to make sure it differentiated from the blue house up front and to get rid of the white in a few of the hidden text pieces I scattered throughout.
Judy’s original art is incredible and a perfect way for our publication to have found its footing and set the high standard we have since held for our covers. It feels full circle to honor the publication’s anniversary using its own pages to give tribute to its beginning. TOWN is a platform for local artists, innovators, and storytellers to shine, and it was meaningful to use those stories and images to recreate our first cover, showing how far we’ve come and how we’ve built on our commitment to the arts and the community.
We are still here. We are still creating. And we will continue to tell local stories for years to come.
Judy Verhoeven | Nov. 2013 and Nov. 2021
How did your art end up on the cover of TOWN?
It started before TOWN even existed! In 2011, I was commissioned to create a collage using papers from the Greenville Journal. The art included LOTS of things which seem like a time capsule now: notable people, the “new” Swamp Rabbit Trail logo, part of a map featuring Greenville and surrounding areas, news about the first TEDx in Greenville, Southwest Airlines coming to GSP, and so much more (from my personal life at the time)—the street light in the art has a latch that my dad designed and patented when he was a GE! Though the artwork wasn’t specifically for TOWN, it’s the most special cover piece for me.
What did it mean to you to have your piece on the cover?
I was honored to be chosen—and it certainly got my art out into the public sphere. I was often asked, “Are you the one who did that TOWN cover?’”
