New ACC Library Books: January 2013

Exhibition catalogs are a great way to feel like you’ve visited shows across the country, and the American Craft Council Library has some wonderful new ones in its collection.

Wendell Castle: Wandering Forms-Works from 1959 to 1979 was issued in connection with an exhibition held at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum from October 19, 2012, to February 20, 2013. Castle received the ACC’s Gold Medal in 1997 in recognition for his innovative and influential design, and is perhaps best known as the father of the American studio furniture movement. This exhibition and book focuses on the iconic masterpieces in wood and technicolor gel-coated fiberglass that Castle created during the 1960s and 1970s, and is filled with information about Castle and images of his furniture design that have never been published before.

Jun Kaneko was commissioned by the San Francisco Opera in 2009 to create a contemporary “Magic Flute,” Mozart’s final opera. Magic Flute documents Kaneko’s work from the first artist sketches until the opening night. This process is illustrated with many color photographs and is accompanied by essays about the production's creation and about Mozart and the age of Enlightenment in which he created this unusual opera. Kaneko was inducted into the ACC College of Fellows in 1996.

Eight Minnesota potters were included in Sharing the Fire, celebrating the ways that knowledge, experience, and spirit are passed from person to person. Four pairs of artists illustrate the challenges of being a working potter, and how each of the four mentors gives to their paired student. This exhibition traveled in Minnesota from May 2012 through January 2013.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry. Wendy Maruyama, as a third generation Japanese-American and artist/furniture maker based in San Diego, created a compelling body of work examining this period in American history. In Wendy Maruyama: executive order 9066, the artist includes objects owned or made by the internees with her own work. Featuring an essay by Lowery Stokes, the catalogue comes in a numbered wooden box. The exhibition will next be on display from February 1 – April 21, 2013, at the Arkansas Arts Center.

Kiff Slemmons & Arte Papel Oaxaca documents the collaboration between artist Kiff Slemmons and Arte Papel Oaxaca, a facility for making paper for artists in the mountain village of Vista Hermosa outside the Mexican city of Oaxaca. Working with artists from Arte Papel, Slemmons used handmade paper of fibers grown in Oaxaca to create jewelry of cut, folded, inked, and wrapped paper. A series of exhibitions of the handmade paper jewelry followed in Mexico and the United States.

To see more exhibition catalogs, search our library catalog. If you are visiting the Twin Cities, please stop by the ACC Library to check out these, and the rest of our resources.

A weekly shout out to the printed word, From the Stacks highlights what's new and what's loved in the American Craft Council Library.