BOOKS / EXHIBITION CATALOGUES / VIDEO
Artists in Their Gardens
Design Sourcebook: Jewellery
Schmuck 2000: Sonderschau of the 52nd International Handwerksmesse Munich
Robert Smit: Empty House
Encyclopedia of Furniture Materials, Trades and Techniques
Jane Sauer: Impassioned Form
Treasures from The Art Institute of Chicago
Chihuly Projects
Chihuly's Pendletons and Their Influence on His Work
Josh Simpson: Glass Artist
Teapots Transformed: Exploration of an Object
Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection
Painted Clay: Graphic Arts and the Ceramic Surface
The Traditional Pottery of Papua New Guinea
Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose
Artists in Their Gardens
by Valerie Easton and David Laskin, 2001, Sasquatch Books, Seattle, WA, 206-826-4322; 160 pages, photography by Allan Mandell. $23.95 paperback.
It shouldn't surprise us that when artists get their hands on soil, space, plants and water, the results are unconventional and often spectacular. This beguiling book features 10 inspiring gardens by 12 artists in the Pacific Northwest. Among them are the ceramist Ann Hirondelle's garden "rooms," a Zen-like oasis; the glass artist Ginny Ruffner's exuberant courtyard garden, a profusion of plants and objects; and the boxed "garden collages" of Johanna Nitzke Marquis, a collage-construction artist. "These artists' gardens are windows into the creative process," observe the authors, who conclude each chapter with a section called "The Artist's Eye," which distills the guiding principles of the garden in question and offers practical advice.
Design Sourcebook: Jewellery
by David Watkins, 1999, New Holland, London, England, distributed by Sterling Publishing Co., New York, NY, 800-367-9692; 128 pages, illustrated. $24.95.
The London-based jewelry artist David Watkins surveys the contemporary jewelry field in all its boldness and variety through a portfolio of works by more than 80 artists from around the world. These are presented by theme—process, poetry, meaning, narrative, sensuality—with Watkins's comments on each artist. A glossary of jewelry terms and an artist index are included.
Schmuck 2000: Sonderschau of the 52nd International Handwerksmesse Munich
2000, Handwerkskammer f¸r M¸nchen und Oberbayern, Max-Joseph-Strasse 4, 80333 Munich, Germany, fax 0049 89 4119 245; 150 pages, foreword by Peter Nickl in German and English, illustrated. $8 paperback.
Documenting the jewelry segment of the 52nd International Handwerksmesse, an annual craft fair in Munich, this attractive catalog features works striking for their playfulness and experimental approach to materials by 65 exhibitors from 19 countries, including leading figures as well as emerging artists. Brief biographies accompany the entries.
Robert Smit: Empty House
by Silke Nalbach, Robert Smit and Gert Staal, 1999, Arnoldsche, Stuttgart, Germany, available from Antique Collectors' Club, Wappingers Falls, NY, 914-297-0003; 176 pages, preface by Helen W. Drutt English, texts in English, German and Italian, illustrated, box cover. $75.
This monograph on the Dutch jewelry artist Robert Smit, who combines gold with painted graffiti-like markings, plays with line like Paul Klee and mingles abstraction and narrative, is itself an innovative work of book art. Smit, collaborating with the graphic designer Silke Nalbach and the writer Gert Staal, conceived this book "as an intimate exploration of an as-yet unfilled space. We would reconstruct emptiness from a superabundance of language, typography, paper, photos and drawings." The "empty house" of the title seems to stand for the artist's memory-filled mind, where his images take form. The unorthodox arrangements of type and images on the page echo the spontaneity of the jewelry and drawings highlighted there.
Encyclopedia of Furniture Materials, Trades and Techniques
by Clive Edwards, 2000, Ashgate, Burlington, VT, 800-535-9544; 262 pages, illustrated. $129.95.
A former designer and now a furniture historian in England, Clive Edwards surveys historical and modern furniture manufacture through more than 1,700 entries. The topics include timbers of every kind, metals and plastics; chair making, upholstery, tools and machinery, finishing, textiles and turning. Often quoting from contemporary accounts, Edwards provides insights into the social status of furniture, the economics of the industry over the centuries and the lives of craftspeople working within it. The upholsterer entry, for example, traces the history of the craft from medieval times to the 20th century, while upholstery describes the techniques involved in historical sequence. With its ample illustrations and extensive bibliography, the book is a valuable reference.
Jane Sauer: Impassioned Form
2001, Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery, University of Nebraska- Lincoln, 402-472-2911; 32 pages, texts by Wendy Weiss, curator, Bruce W. Pepich and Jane Sauer, illustrated. $10 paperback.
Of the 20 sculptural works of knotted waxed linen and pigment by the fiber artist Jane Sauer in an exhibition at the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery (February 11-March 16), documented in this catalog, four represent a striking change in appearance from the dense closed forms she has been developing since the 1980s. In the new pieces, the artist has turned the outer "skin" into a transparent gourdlike vessel containing intertwined shapes. Among other things, Wendy Weiss and Bruce W. Pepich touch on the emotional and autobiographical aspects of Sauer's work.
Treasures from The Art Institute of Chicago
2000, The Art Institute of Chicago, IL, distributed by Hudson Hills Press, New York, NY, 212-674-6005; 343 pages, selected by James N. Wood, commentaries by Debra N. Mancoff, illustrated. $75.
This survey of the Art Institute's collection features some 440 works spanning 10 curatorial departments. Cultures worldwide are represented by objects in many media and periods—from antiquity through the late 20th century. The arrangement is by culture as well as chronology. Debra N. Mancoff's introduction summarizes the institute's history from its founding in 1879, and traces the changing criteria that have determined the definition of a "treasure." The section covering the second half of the 20th century includes works by Lenore Tawney, Claire Zeisler and Lissy Funk, suggesting the strength of the museum's holdings in contemporary fiber.
Chihuly Projects
by Dale Chihuly, 2000, Portland Press, Seattle, WA, distributed by Harry N. Abrams, New York, NY, 800-345-1359; 364 pages, essays by Barbara Rose and Dale M. Lanzone, illustrated. $75.
Over more than three decades as an artist, Dale Chihuly has become an international impresario, embarking on grand public installations in cities around the world. This lavish volume focuses on 33 projects, starting with glass and neon installations done in collaboration with James Carpenter at Rhode Island School of Design 1968-71, and culminating in "Chihuly in the Light of Jerusalem 2000." Vivid photographs document the processes, teamwork and finished projects. In her essay, Barbara Rose sees Chihuly as "an artistic Superman—capable of crossing boundaries, crashing through barriers, destroying stereotypes, linking continents." He is the only artist, perhaps outside of Robert Rauschenberg, she says, "who manages actually to live out the sixties dream of making environmental art for the people and of connecting groups in communal situations. He does this by using technology as a tool to take us back to nature."
Chihuly's Pendletons and Their Influence on His Work
by Dale Chihuly, 2000, Portland Press, Seattle, WA, distributed by University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 520-621-1441; 256 pages, foreword by Charles J. Lohrmann, designed by Malcolm Grear, illustrated. $65.
As a student of weaving and textiles before turning to glass, Dale Chihuly fell in love with handwoven Navajo blankets and with the American Indian trade blankets manufactured by Pendleton and other western mills in the late 19th and early 20th century. He began collecting the latter, eventually acquiring more than 600 examples. The brilliant colors, bold geometric designs and intricate weaving of the Navajo weavings and the "Pendletons" inspired the artist's Navajo Blanket Cylinder series, 1974-95, in which he (with the help of colleagues) developed a "pick-up" technique for capturing the blanket patterns on the surface of the glass cylinders. Chihuly tells the story in this book, which presents more than 60 examples from his collection interspersed with archival photos of Native Americans, dramatic images of the Cylinders and process photos. The historian Charles J. Lohrmann provides a succinct history of the trade blankets.
Josh Simpson: Glass Artist
by Andrew Chaikin, 2001, Guild Publishing, Madison, WI, distributed by North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH, 800-221-5831; 127 pages, foreword by Michael W. Monroe, illustrated. $35.
Through engaging photographs and text, this book draws the reader into the life and art of Josh Simpson, the Massachusetts glass artist who in a 30-year career has produced platters, vessels and sculptural works. Among the last mentioned are his "planets," transparent globes containing complex inner worlds that resemble the seas or the heavens, some of them inspired by the exploits of his astronaut wife, Cady Coleman. Andrew Chaikin, executive editor of SPACE.com and editor of SPACE Illustrated, profiles the artist and guides the reader through the making of a Simpson megaworld.
Teapots Transformed: Exploration of an Object
by Leslie Ferrin, 2000, Guild Publishing, Madison, WI, distributed by North Light Books, Cincinnati, OH, 800-221-5831; 128 pages, illustrated. $30.
More than 140 teapots dating from 1965 to the present by 117 artists—potters, clay sculptors, metalsmiths, glassblowers and others—are presented under the chapter headings "Studio Potters," "Yixing Influence," "Sculpture, Pattern and Abstraction," "Figure and Narrative" and "The Teapot as Subject" in this compendium by Leslie Ferrin, founding partner/director of Pinch Pottery and Ferrin Gallery, Northampton, MA. The author has contributed to the ongoing teapot fascination by organizing annual competitions/exhibitions devoted to the genre.
Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection
edited by Mary F. Douglas, curator, 2000, Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Charlotte, NC, 704-337-2061; 224 pages, texts by Douglas, Mark Richard Leach, Garth Clark, Carol E. Mayer, Barbara Perry, Todd D. Smith, E. Michael Whittington, illustrated. $30 paperback.
Over 25 years, the collector Allan Chasanoff acquired nearly 450 ceramic works from Europe, Asia and North America. This catalog documents the recent exhibition "Selections from the Allan Chasanoff Ceramic Collection" at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design (November 4-May 27), to which Chasanoff donated the collection. The ceramics are grouped by categories that reflect recurring motifs in the collection: animal portraits, the figure, fractured vessels, metamorphosis, specimens, structure and strata, tradition reconsidered, trompe l'oeil, the vessel as body. Within these categories, the works are presented on the page so as to emphasize affinities or create relationships. The essayists bring varying perspectives to the issues raised by the collection and illuminate its idiosyncrasies.
Painted Clay: Graphic Arts and the Ceramic Surface
by Paul Scott, 2001, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, NY, 800-278-8477; 176 pages, illustrated. $40.
"As this book will show," writes Paul Scott, a British ceramic artist, writer and curator, "there is ceramic work that is neither pottery, nor sculpture. It is painting, drawing or printmaking, but on a ceramic surface, sometimes, significantly, flat." Though historical examples are included and a chapter is devoted to eminent 20th-century "visitors" to clay like Picasso and MirÛ, the book's focus is on contemporary international artists for whom the graphic treatment of the ceramic surface is the primary concern.
The Traditional Pottery of Papua New Guinea
by Patricia May and Margaret Tuckson, 2000, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 808-956-8697; 380 pages, illustrated. $50.
This definitive study, first published in 1982 and now reprinted with revisions, surveys pottery making in every corner of Papua New Guinea. Patricia May, an art historian, and Margaret Tuckson, a potter in Australia, who spent nearly a decade engaged in the fieldwork for the book, discuss clay preparation, forming and firing techniques and the various approaches to decoration. The abundant photographs bring to life the pots, with their distinctive designs, and the people in their villages making and using them. Appendixes on terminology and clay analyses, a glossary and an updated bibliography are included.
Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose
by Robin Hopper, 2000, Second Edition, Krause Publications, Iola, WI, 800-258-0929; 255 pages, illustrated. $44.95 paperback.
Combining philosophy and practicality, Robin Hopper, a British-born potter and teacher living in Canada, explores the forms, meanings and function of utilitarian pottery in this extensively revised, updated edition of his 1986 reference book. Complemented by photographs of historical and contemporary examples as well as drawings, Hopper analyzes form and proportion, then settles pragmatically into the mechanics of creating wheel-thrown pots. He concludes with a portfolio, "Ways of Working," presenting the recent work and short biographies of 16 ceramic artists.
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