Sonny Clark
Day 16
#78 – Conrad Yeatis ‘Sonny’ Clark (1931–1963). American ‘hard bop’ jazz pianist. Albums include: Sonny Clark Trio (1957), Cool Struttin’ (1958) and Leapin’ and Lopin’ (1961).
I started by writing his name out. With the same letters this provided opportunities to play with the positioning of the letters and I experimented with different typefaces and colours – the bright yellow and orange worked well. But after reading about him more I discovered he had died at 31. Someone with a bright future cut down in their prime by a heart attack. I looked at different ways of getting this across and started with burn marks, but it wasn’t dramatic enough. As I was experimenting with trying to split the words to express ‘cut down’, I accidently coloured the shape black and this reminded me of a guillotine. Far more powerful.
1.5 hours
One of the early tests
Listen...
to excerpts from ‘Cool Struttin’.