Terry Shanahan had a great idea one day. We were talking on the phone while I was getting ready to leave for a tour of Italy in January of 2014, to promote my latest CD. I told him about how I had been photographing interesting bathrooms for 10 years during my travels, and he suggested that I put together a book of these photos and call it "Dear John". The concept evolved from simple photographs to painted photographs, as I had seen Terry's work as an artist, and some of this work included painted photographs which I thought were just great. We thought to paint scenes into each photo...and this in turn evolved into the idea to include a short poem with each painted photo; something that had to do with love and relationships. "Dear John..." was born. 
We began to go through the photos, which I had started taking in 2004 while onboard the MS Veendam for a cruise. There were quite a few from the Veendam, as well as from 2 other ships, along with photos from the many hotel rooms and clubs that I had either stayed in or performed at while on tour in Italy during 2006, 2013 and 2014. We picked out what we felt were the most interesting ones, and got to work. "Dear John..." is a work in progress, and the process is simple, but tedious. Terry has chosen to use a very primitive computer program on his Mac G4, which is very fitting as many of these photos were taken using a cell phone. The goal is to make something creative with the least amount of help. You can find the official "Dear John..." blog, along with a few pages from the book, by clicking here.
~ Carolyne