Burnside’s Brent Knopf Spectacular!
Featured, Music — By Dylan Peterson on October 2, 2009 at 12:00 pmA look the artwork of Intuit.
by Michael Dallas Miller
While recording his upcoming Barsuk release under the name Ramona Falls, Portland’s Brent Knopf spent more time with the man who would illustrate the cover to Intuit than any musician with which he collaborated. Knopf spent only three hours with other musicians recording tracks, but he spent hours upon hours with Theo Ellsworth sharing dreams, discussing thoughts about the universe, and deciding what animal head Knopf would most like to replace his own. While Knopf does laundry in his Portland home and Ellsworth drives up the California coast, Sound grabs a minute with both creative sides—the inspired and inspirer—to find out how 11 songs of left-field rock ‘n’ roll and some colored pencils creates a single piece of art known as an album.
"Intuit" - Ramona Falls
A) OPENING AZTECS
With nearly all of Ellsworth’s illustrations, it can be difficult to find a center-point—a figure that gives our eye something to focus on. There is nothing that is just as it appears to be. Brent Knopf would not have it any other way. Knopf says these opening, layered figures perfectly visualize one of the central themes of his album. “I like the idea of people inside of people,” says Knopf. “You never know what you you’re sharing, or what of other you’re really seeing.” When asked how he decided to portray this idea through ancient Aztec men, Ellsworth claims, “it came in flash. I have a thing, I guess, for ancient art. People tell me a lot that my stuff ends of looking like Aztecs.”
B) THE MAZE
Just below the album cover’s central image, there is a maze. And, as Brent Knopf sees it, underneath all of our words and kind deeds and politeness, there is a maze of misery and mystery and love. “This comes out in ‘Always Right’ where I try to figure out how to talk to someone who thinks they are always right, when I think I’m always right too,” says Knopf. “There is a lot going on that we don’t see—and that is more the truth of things.” Ellsworth claims he only illustrated through listening to the general feel of the album, and paid little to no attention to particular lyrics, so all the creatures running through the maze mean nothing in themselves, but can the same be said for all of the numerous other animals?
C) AN OWL AND AN ELEPHANT
“One day, I asked Brent if he was to have the head of any animal replace his head,” says Theo from San Francisco. “Brent said, ‘An owl and an elephant.” It could just be a over-interpretation from a background of literary theory and bible class, but these two figures seem altogether religiously symbolic and point towards Hinduism (see the third eye on the figures’ foreheads) although Knopf he says he is only vaguely interested in Taoism (“I like the celebration of thought of paradox,” says Knopf, his laundry folded) and Ellsworth claims no lyric gave him the motivation to draw the third eyes. “I’ve never been drawn to any one religion, but I draw every day,” says Ellsworth. “That is my devotion to something higher.”
D) FLYING AWAY
“Brent and I spent a lot of time together sharing our dreams with each other. At the time of the making the album, I was having a lot of visions of Benjamin Franklin,” says Ellsworth. Thus, a fish kite, lightning and a golden key. These figures are flying somewhere—all figures are going somewhere and this, to Ellsworth, is one thing that makes his art unique. “I draw comics, too,” says Ellsworth. “My book and all pictures are stories that are not completed. There is always something before and something after. I don’t do commissioned work much, so I was nervous about this project and fitting my art to someone else’s. I don’t draw to please people.” Neither, it seems, does Knopf—an artist who intentionally set up challenging circumstances (why would anyone limit himself to three hours with his contributing musicians?) and put out Intuit. He did not, in our interview, mention a word about how he hoped the public might receive it.
Theo Ellsworth lives and creates in Portland. His work can be found at theoellsworth.blogspot.com.
