We are doing a story about the subject covered in a professor’s new book (excerpt below). It’s a spring issue so a spring color palette would be great but not essential—camouflage colors would be appropriate. The artist I chose is Emiliano Ponzi who resides in Milan, Italy. Emiliano did a spot for the Road Taken essay in the Winter 10 issue—he did several terrific sketches and the outcome was perfect. I don’t always test out a cover artist but when they complete a previous assignment so well I know the possibility of success is greater so I keep them in mind. His work is also very conceptual and that’s the route we wanted to take with this cover.

Book jacket

excerpt:

Excerpt “Knock on the door of the federal government in 2008, and chances are that you will find nobody home. The U.S. government’s impulse to exploit the comparative advantage of the private sector, and the private sector’s responsiveness to demand for its services, have combined to replace Big Government with a staggeringly large shadow government. In this new world, the private sector increasingly handles the everyday business of governing.”

-From One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy by Allison Stanger, the Russell Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics and the director of the Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, at Middlebury.

Last fall we planned to do our cover on Katy Smith Abbott and her efforts behind the uncovering the identity of an artist of a recent Museum acquisition, the Museum show that followed and her general enthusiasm for all of the above. We hired Mark Ostow to do the feature and cover shots. Mark had shot the Summer 09 cover featuring the Bread Loaf caretaker, Leo Hotte. Mark is great with the subject, fun to work with and makes amazing portraits.

We sent him some scouting images after visiting the museum and Katy’s office.