2 comments about Potter's Studio Handbook: A Start-to-Finish Guide to Hand-Built and Wheel-Thrown Ceramics (Backyard Series).

1. I am an intermediate potter looking for new ideas, techiniques, and sources of inspiration. I expected this book to include more projects. The first 130 pages included light coverage of basic information that is available in dozens of other books. There are only fifty pages devoted to specific projects and they were uninspiring and frustrating. I was initially excited by the opening picture of a vase with clay applique. However, there were no instructions for that project... The instructions for the chip and dip dish was one page conisisting of mostly photographs and very little instruction. It gave you no indication as to how to properly join the dip bowl to the larger bowl. Do you score and slip the bottom? Also, how do you trim the bottom of the larger bowl once you have already attached the small bowl? A more experienced potter may already have these solutions. They should have been included in the instructions for this piece.
   As an intermediate potter, I found this book frustrating. For the beginning potter, there are better books out there....



2. This book it is very helpfull for a beginer and also I think for people that practice pottery more than a hobby. It has very good pictures and the experience of the author seems to give a complex image for the entire big lesson for pottery.

3 comments about Artist's Photo Reference: Water & Skies.

1. I love the Artist's Photo Reference series. Water and Skies by Bart Rulon was the last one that I bought, because it's out of print and the price of used copies has been soaring. I kept putting it off in favor of less expensive used copies of other books in the series, even though Water and Skies covers a subject I love to paint. Finally the price dipped under $30 again and I ordered immediately.
   
   From the photos on the cover, I thought most of it would be clouds and open water without land, but there are some gems in this volume that I know I'm going to use to create spectacular landscapes. I liked the swamp section a lot. I finally found a reference for cypresses in standing water for a traditional New Orleans style Swamp Scene and I found egrets on another page -- both elements I needed for this planned work right in the same volume. The photos in this book range through a wide variety of subjects and the text is fine. The lessons are interesting and as with all the Artist's Photo Reference series, are each in different mediums by different artists to give any reader ideas for new techniques and mediums.
   
   I enjoyed it so much, and have the pure satisfaction of seeing the stack of Artist's Photo Reference books get as complete as possible. I hope that North Light Books continues the series and would really like one that took the artist under the water to see tropical reefs, fish and animals under the water.
   
   Any of this series are immensely useful for an artist. The title says it all. That is what it is -- a hardback book full of photo references to use for painting and drawing. The text itself is relatively short, the lessons are interesting but the meat of the book is the hundreds of excellent photographs of different weather, different climates, water in all its states. You can find what you need in this one for any landscape you'd like to draw -- including that traditional Swamp Painting that I know I'm going to do.



2. I just absolutely love this book. I bought this with the Landscape part of the series, with the hope to get more water. This book has it. It has a wonderful selection of snow scenes and even frost!!! It then has several different types of beach and ocean scenes. The one thing that I was really looking for that this book didn't have, which is why I gave it a 4, was that there was no rain. There were plenty of fog and mist, which were wonderful, but not a single rain picture. They had a few rainbows, but no rain. I thought it was interesting, but perhaps its just really that hard to take a picture of rain. So if your looking for a book with rain, I would suggest looking elsewere. If your just looking for a great book with lots of water and sky, this would be my pick!!



3. What a fantastic book! The photos and the art are all Breathtaking. Its a must for any landscape artist's book shelf. I've used it time and time again.

No comments about Space, Site, Intervention: Situating Installation Art.

No comments about Best of Black and White: Erotic Photography.

5 comments about The Joseph Cornell Box: Found Objects, Magical Worlds.

1. I got this at the Getty Museum, Joseph Cornell being one of my favorite artists. I loved the selection of clipart which I made copies of & used in my own collages. The box itself,well,I just like having it on display on a shelf in my room. There is also a very nicely detailed book with background about the artist as well as ideas for making your own box,by using the one in the kit (or making your own,which I'll probably end up doing.) A unique introduction to an equally unique artist,that would make a great gift for artistic types &/or fans of Cornell's work.



2. I think the book/kit is beautifully put together. It's a wonderful way for children and adults to learn about Cornell's life and work, gaining a sense of clarity about an artist whose personal mythology could so easily be considered inaccessible.



3. One of my design students brought the box part of this set into class as a base for a prototype this evening... while an interesting artifact, the concept of it is a bit frightening. Reducing Cornell's -- or any other artist's -- vision into an ersatz how-to kit not only undermines the brilliance and significance of the work of the artist, but completely defeats the process of artistic self-discovery and exploration on the part of the student. While this box-set looks good at twenty-feet, a better route would be to read-up on Cornell and other self-taught artists in more robust texts (Howard Finster, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Jacques Henri Lartigue... all of whom have books on Amazon) and use this insight to forge one's own artistic path in life... one that derives inspiration from the artist themselves rather than from a how-to kit.



4. I wouldn't recommend this book necessarily to serious artists, but for a person beginning their first tentative steps toward collage and assemblage, this kit would be a good introduction. It includes a full-color book with lots of images and descriptions of Cornell's works and life. The kit itself provides materials for taking a first step toward creating found art. This would be particularly good for a young person as a way to introduce them to Cornell.



5. Interesting example of artists work but carboard box is flimsy and not as authentic as I expected. Looked better online.

2 comments about History of Men's Magazines: 1960's At The Newsstand (Dian Hanson's: The History of Men's Magazines: Volume 3).

1. I already have Volume 2 of Dian Hanson's encyclopedic _History of Men's Magazines_, detailing what I believe to be the golden age of that genre (the 1950's), so I was really looking forward to getting Volume 1. This volume is presented just as beautifully as the other five volumes in the series, with lots of gorgeous full-page color and B&W photos.
   
   However, there is a very big oversight, not to say error, in the material contained in this volume. Let me explain; Volume 1 bills itself as covering the history of men's magazines from 1900 to the period immediately after World War II. OK. So where are all the pictures from 1900 to the beginning of the 1920's? Certainly, there weren't very many magazines specializing in girlie art or photography before the Roaring Twenties, but France did have several, most notably the famous "La Vie Parisienne", which started publishing in, I believe, the 1870's and ran almost continuously for seven or eight decades. There was a LOT of first-class girlie art in that 'zine from the 1870's to the 1910's (including some classic art produced during World War I) that Hanson could have located and reproduced. Also, what about the Gibson Girl in "Life"? That's not strictly "girlie" art within the parameters set by this series, to be sure, but she was such an iconic figure that she should have gotten at least a couple of pictures. Or what about all the "French postcards" of the Gay Nineties and after? Those directly adumbrated the later girlie magazines, and also go unrepresented, at least in the pictures.
   
   Furthermore, Hanson errs seriously in putting a large number of pictures from the 1950's and 1960's in a volume that is expressly _not_ dedicated to those decades (the 1960's, in fact, get two volumes later on in the series). She may have intended to show how girlie photography developed over the decades, but there was plenty of room later on in the series to do that. The space misappropriated to those pictures would much better have been allocated to the kind of imagery I described in the previous paragraph.
   
   Sorry, Dian. I really like Volume 2. Volume 1, however, is a rather disappointing introduction to what should have been a definitive reference work on a little-studied genre.



2. I can't think of another publisher, other than Taschen, who would risk publishing a six-volume, extravagantly produced history of men's magazines and who better than Dian Hanson to write it. She has had plenty of experience in this section of the magazine trade.
   
   This volume covers the fourteen years from 1945 and really it is not too interesting until Hefner starts Playboy in 1953. Until then the market was basically down-market cheesecake and burlesque oriented magazines though there are chapters devoted to John Willie's 'Bizarre' and Lenny Burtman's 'Exotique' but these were hardly mass-market titles. Chapter three, nicely, features titles from Argentina and Mexico and chapter six covers England. Playboy was the title that makes this history interesting, unique when it first came out but not for long, titles like Nugget, The Dude, Swank, Rogue and others made this genre of publishing sort of respectable.
   
   The seventeen chapters follow the same format, a few hundred words of copy and then pages and pages of covers and spreads from the various titles. Chapter sixteen features the Top 5 Cover girls, Diane Webber, June Wilkinson, Jayne Mansfield, Bettie Page and predictably Marilyn as number one. Chapter seventeen is a neat finale, devoted to the tacky ads that appeared in the back of many men's titles. Major advertisers totally shunned most of this market for obvious reasons.
   
   Fascinating though the book is I do have a major disappointment (so four stars) and that is the paper, a matt stock that soaks up the ink so that none of the covers sparkle. I've bought several other pop culture Taschen books this year and they have all had semi gloss stock that reproduces covers and illustrations so well. There are a few hundred color covers in 'The History of Men's Magazines' and frequently the whole page ones look soft and grainy, they are, after all, reproduced from something already printed, a different paper would have mostly avoided this. Another slight annoyance is the three-language text (English, French and German) all set in the same typeface so at the end of a column one naturally goes to the next column and it is German. To my mind it would have been preferable to run each language in its own text block.
   
   Apart from the paper I thought the book was well worth having and if you
   read the Product Description you'll see what the other five volumes cover.
   When complete I think this will become the definitive work about this
   corner of the publishing world. I'm already making shelf-room for the set.

3 comments about Art and Feminism (Themes & Movements).

1. This book would be an excellent textbook for a Women In Art course. It doesn't have much information on centuries prior to the twentieth and largely focuses on art, artists, and issues from the 1960's on, so it wouldn't do as the only text for such a course. But this is all you need for late twentieth century concerns.
   
   The early essays are dripping with Freudian psychology and psychoanalytical social criticism. The issues surrounding why it took so long for there to be a sense of equality of greatness amongst artists of all genders is explored deeply. The issues of representation of all races and sexual orientations then follows. The book stops just short of discussing the newest research on intersex persons (persons born with an extra chomosome, among others {XXY, for example}).
   
   For a movement that was intending to create a sense of equality, feminist theory highlights both the vast differences as well as the profound similarities between the perception processes of men and women. This includes both the perceptions of and different approaches to art as well as life. Yet, when all is said and done, more recent artists are primarily interested not in these issues, but more a sense of having their work judged based on its quality, not their gender.
   
   The only disappointment I have in this book is one that no other book addresses either. So, I mean this only as a minor criticism. In short, the book does not answer the following: Is ther an intersex mind state? Feminist theory either didn't reach the point of asking this in time for the extensive research put into this book or it has come to its conclusion and will transform gradually into a whole other movement.
   
   The art chosen to represent the above ideas and explorations is top quality. The reproductions are sharp and colorful. I would recommend this book to anyone with interests in women in art or in feminist theory.



2. This book is a great "picture book" for anyone interested in art and/or women artist. The descriptions of the work are concise, giving enough information to make you want to investigate further. A necessary addition to any art book collection.



3. I saw this book reviewed in Bust mag and am so glad I got a copy for myself. Peggy Phelan and Helena Reckitt have accomplished a "portable gallery" in this book--it is like seeing all of the works themselves, but with commentary that helps at every step of the way.

   Peggy Phelan's introduction is great because she draws everything together in a way that I couldn't do on my own, and actually, I am amazed ANYONE could do it. Wow.

   The book is expensive but worth it because otherwise you would have to buy about 100 books to try and do for yourself what they did here.

   Peggy and Helena, and all the artists, YOU ROCK!!!

2 comments about Teach Me Too!.

1. This is one of those books where the author couldn't care less about lesbians, but the publisher realizes that girls-loving-girls sells, so they put three nude women intertwined together on the cover despite the fact that there are very FEW lesbian scenes in this book! I CALL THAT FALSE ADVERTISING! I was very disappointed as a result! It's an illustrated book largely filled with drawings of guys with their genitalia hanging out. Not erotic or even interesting. Why can't they be honest and make that clear on their cover picture? Answer: Because they want to sell to gullible people like myself.
   
   THE COVER PICTURE IS THE BEST PART OF THIS BOOK!!!



2. This book only has seventy-two pages, but they are all eye-openers. Very, how shall I say this, informative, that's how I'll say it, informative. As you know there is more than one way to do it and it's possible to do it with more than one person, even at the same time. It's all here, in this delightfully outrageous animated, cartoon-type, picture book that now has a prominent position on my coffee table.
   
   And what a converstation piece this book is. Friends come over, we talk, maybe have coffee, or a glass of wine if it's after 5:00 or so. Their eyes will drift to the book, but, of course, they don't mention it. However, if I leave the room, you know, like if I have to go to the bathroom, or if I go out to the kitchen to get some more wine, well, faster than you can say fast, they have this book up and in their hands, leaving through the pages faster than the speed of light. Then they go through it again, slower. Then I come back, catch them with the book in their hands, `cuz they can't put it down and we talk. Some very interesting conversations, let me tell you.

No comments about Twenty 2.

1 comments about Angel Lust Vol 1 - A Gallery Girls Book (Gallery Girls Collection).

1. The Gallery Girls collections from SQP are some of my most favorite collections of fantasy art since they present such an eclectic variety of talents. Previous Gallery Girls collections have put the spotlight on Vampires (Crimson Embrace series), Witches (Coven series), Pirates (Treasured Chests) and Jungle Women (Jungle Tails) to name just a few. Angel Lust is a new Gallery Girls collection and as the title suggests, it features illustrations of seductive, erotic angels by some of the finest talents in fantasy art. Like the other books in the Gallery Girls series, this is a soft cover, magazine-sized book with black & white, primarily pencil illustrations. The roll call for Angel Lust includes: Mitch Byrd, Diego Greco, Pedro Cuevas, Danilo Guida, Brian Le Blanc, German Ponce, and several more.
   
   The different take each artist has on the subject matter is what makes the Gallery Girls books so interesting. Some present Angels as playful and shy, others as great warriors, battling hordes of evil. Still others take a more ominous approach depicting their angels as tragic victims, falling to dark powers akin to many old Renaissance-era paintings. There is no end to the diversity. Danilo Guida presents one of the aforementioned darker pieces showing an angel being accosted by a legion of demons, as her clothes are torn to shreds. Brian LeBlanc illustrates a rather humorous piece of a beautiful warrior angel directing two male Cherubic angels into battle.
   
   A Titanic, God-like angel is the center of attention in a piece by German Ponce as an angel that dwarfs the Earth, stands holding handfuls of agonized men in her hands, perhaps on the way to their final, eternal damnation. Diego Greco provides a much lighter illustration showing a pair of "storm angels", lying on a cloud, one holding a watering can and the other a handful of lighting bolts, preparing to send a potent storm down upon the planet. The angel is a Diego Candia drawing finds herself captured by Satan himself. In yet another fantastic piece, Danilo Guida depicts a Templar, or some other Holy Knight bowing before a celestial, warrior angel, not unlike a Valkyrie from Norse mythology. My favorite illustration in the book is one by Luis Buci that shows a horrified blonde, nude angel being restrained by dozens of demonic tentacles, laden with spikes and tiny mouths with razor-sharp fangs.
   
   The book also sports a painted cover by Paleaz. A great new Gallery Girls Collection from SQP!
   
   
   Reviewed by Tim Janson