Since then we’ve become good friends, and she has a large collection of my work - though I don’t see her as often anymore, because I moved out to far West Texas. If I remember right, she bought some of my work from Davis Gallery in Austin and they gave her my phone number. We both lived in Austin, but we hadn’t met yet. You say “Shawn visited the studio one night” - how did you come to work on this album? Was she already a fan of your art? “It’s time for a few small repairs,” she said Shawn took the title of that piece, ”A Few Small Repairs,” and wrote it into the ”Sunny Came Home” lyrics: ”A Few Small Repairs” is the title of another painting/collage I did of a woman all stapled, stabbed, and sewn together (also a little part of her was on fire) that was sort of second runner-up for the album cover. The title of the album cover painting is actually ”Setting the World on Fire. She had written that most amazingly beautiful of all songs, ”Sunny Came Home,” to the painting. A couple of weeks later she handed me a CD (or maybe it was a tape?) and told me to take it home and listen. Shawn visited the studio one night and we went through a box of transparencies of all my past work and she chose that one.
Which came first, the painting or the album? Were you commissioned for this project, or was it licensed after you’d already finished it? This week, we talk with Julie Speed, the artist responsible for the cover of Shawn Colvin’s A Few Small Repairs. Have you ever wondered what inspired the images on your favorite album covers? With Uncovered, we discuss the stories behind the artwork with the people who made them.