(ASHFIELD, Mass.) – The cover illustration of two brides on the June 25, 2012, issue of the New Yorker magazine was created by Gayle Kabaker, an illustrator who lives and works in Ashfield, Mass. Kabaker’s illustration, “June Brides,” is Kabaker’s first time in the New Yorker.

The New Yorker’s art editor, Françoise Mouly, found Kabaker’s image through her Blown Covers blog. Every week, Mouly hosts a cover contest on the blog, open to all, with themes that closely mirror those she suggests to her regular contributors, from Father’s Day to books to the theme that reeled this image in: weddings. Kabaker is the first artist to make the leap from blog to cover.

“I live in the Berkshires, so I do almost all of my work online,” Kabaker said. “It’s a big deal, getting on the cover. We’ve been getting the magazine forever

— it comes in and goes straight on the kitchen table. We talk about the cover with my son, who’s seventeen, and my daughter, who’s twenty-three. ‘What do you think it means?’ It’s a conversation. And we all read it, dog-ear it, and leave it on the table for the next person to pick up.”

“Françoise told me not to tell my mother until the issue actually went to press, because things could change,” Kabaker added. “I didn’t want to say that my mother’s dead — but I know she’d be very proud of me.”

Kabaker is the mother of recording artist Sonya Kitchell.