Tommie Phillips has one foot in the past and the other securely in the future. Having lived through the psychedelic sounds of the ’60s, the progressive rock of the ’70s, the revival of both in the ’90s and the death of numerous music formats and their subsequent resurrections, he’s seen just about every sonic trend come and go.
An artist, Phillips also watched as album art devolved from highly detailed, hand-drawn LP covers to boring, digitally rendered CD jackets — and then nearly disappeared altogether when downloading stole the show. Now, after years of working as a digital designer, he’s returned to the things he loves most: music and making album art.
“Initially I was enamored with Photoshop and digital art,” says Phillips. “I thought it would be the next big thing, [but] over time it became so commonplace. I realized that my specialty was illustration.”
Now Phillips, a Boulder resident, is getting more and more work as an album-art illustrator, a once-dead profession that is seeing a revival with the resurgence of vinyl. It all started, oddly enough, with connections made possible by the Internet and modern technology.
Phillips, known professionally as Tommie Molecule, went to art school at the American Academy of Art in Chicago in the late ’70s, then transitioned to the digital world at that city’s School of the Art Institute. He spent the better part of the ’80s and ’90s doing high-end photo retouching for Burrell Colour Lab in his home state of Indiana. But working long hours staring at a computer screen burned him out, and he moved to Colorado for a fresh start.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE AT GONZO:
 | Union (Standard DVD) DVD - £7.99 |
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| Rock of the 70s DVD - £7.99 |
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