Lucinda Cowell

In the run-up to last Sunday's 'Crabs' gallery, I posted a couple of other Guy N. Smith covers on Facebook. One of them, Werewolf by Night, was by Lucinda Cowell and a little digging around turned up a few facts about her.

Lucinda L. Cowell was an American-born – on 18 March 1947 – who set up a print design shop in London in 1972. She worked closely with Terry Gilliam on Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) and on the book Animations of Mortality (Eyre Methuen, 1978). She returned to America, moving to San Francisco, California, and designed covers for records, including Just for Fun and Tiptoe Tapdance by Hank Jones (1977-78), and records by Red Garland, Rance Allen, Tommy Flanagan, Idris Muhammad and Dewey Redman in 1977-80. Later credits include paintings for Adventures of Baron Munchausen, the 1988 soundtrack to Gilliam's movie by Michael Kamen, and designs and illustrations for Chronicle by Miles Davis (1992) and Everybody's Singin' Love Songs by Sweet Thunder (1995).

In 1980 she co-founded, with her husband Ron (Ronald Earl) Michaelson, the company Concept Art Studios, an entertainment-advertising agency creating ad campaigns for both art films and mainstream movies. The company expanded from a garage operation and now boasts a 20-person team working under the direction of Aaron Michaelson. The company has worked on some of the highest profile movies and electronic games of the last thirty years, including Superman, Teen Wolf, Sex, Lies and Videotape, Mona Lisa, Barton Fink, Ace Ventura, Traffic, Matrix Revolutions, Kill Bill, V For Vendetta, Bolt, Fast & Furious, Unknown and Sherlock Holmes, Halo, Bioshock 2 and upcoming Gatsby.

In the early- and mid-1970s, Cowell produced dustjackets and paperback covers for a number of books. She also produced interior artwork for Science Fiction Monthly in 1974-75. Her book cover credits include:

The Bedside Book of Horror, ed. Herbert van Thal. Arthur Barker, 1972.
Destiny Doll by Clifford D. Simak. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1973.
Panic O'Clock by Christopher Hodder-Williams. NEL, Aug 1974.
Werewolf by Night by Guy Smith. NEL, Sep 1974.
Dracula 3: Dracula's Brother by Robert Lory. NEL, Nov 1974.
Dragon Skins by Richard Allen. NEL, Jan 1975.
Inverted World by Christopher Priest. NEL, 1975.
Songmaster by Orson Scott Card. Dial Press, 1980.
Unaccompanied Sonata and other stories by Orson Scott Card. Dial Press, 1981.