Books to Keep You Warm Over the Holidays
A selection of books from Sunday Poem Editor James Crews
The Pictures We Leave Behind
Artists are maybe uniquely situated for the posthumous book treatment because the images do so much of the talking, as opposed to a traditional biography.
The Beauty of Book Spines
With the advent of online bookstores, the cover of a book has become our first visual interaction with unknown tomes. Still, though, in bookstores and libraries and our friends' shelves at dinner parties, we are most often greeted by the spine of a book. It is, despite that familiarity, maybe a bit neglected as a design form—more like the edge of a cassette tape case than the front of a record sleeve.
Jennie Harbour, Where Have You Gone?
One of the most beautiful and contemporary wonder tale books I’ve seen, My Favourite Book of Fairy Tales, was published near the end of the Golden Age of illustration in 1921. It is illustrated by an exceptionally talented artist, acclaimed in her own lifetime, who history has transformed into an elusive mystery: Jennie Harbour.
Six Books’ Stories with Denise Markonish
MASS MoCA curator Denise Markonish shares her stories of experiences with selected books featuring Nick Cave, Jen Bervin, Mary Ruefle, Barbara Bourland, Carl Belz, J.M. Arms Sheldon, and Camille Flammarion.
Book from the Ground: Point to Point by Xu Bing
100 Word Book Review: Book from the Ground by Xu Bing. In the 1920s, a group of scholars in Vienna tried devising a universal picture language called isotype. Today, Shigetaka Kurita has perhaps achieved that vision with emojis. And in 2012 Xu Bing wrote a book without words from emojis and other contemporary symbols.
Joseph Keckler, Interdimensional Traveler
I have a copy of a brand new book, Dragon at the Edge of a Flat World, sitting on the edge of my desk. Inside it is inscribed: "Hope we stay in the same reality. Love, Joseph." At the time, I did not fully appreciate the extent to which Joseph Keckler, the author, is a dimension-traveling wizard. But I already had inklings.
John Stezaker & the Not-So-Perfect Marriage
John Stezaker’s surreal, handmade collages—comprised of film stills, publicity portraits, and postcards collected from thrift stores and bookshops—are masterful studies in contradiction. They are familiar and nostalgic, but also unexpected and strange. Like a Coen Brothers film or Flannery O’Connor short story, they walk that compelling line between comedy and tragedy.
The Gorgeous Nothings: The Envelope Poems of Emily Dickinson
For Proust," Susan Howe writes in her Preface to The Gorgeous Nothings, "a fragment is a morsel of time in its pure state; it hovers between a present that is immediate and a past that once had been present." The fragments Howe is specifically referring to are the envelopes left [...]
Skyscrapers: A Cure For Loneliness & Overconsumption? Judith Dupré on the World’s Most Extraordinary Buildings
Lewis Wickes Hine, A construction worker at the Empire State Building, 1931. (Photo courtesy the New York Public Library Digital Gallery) Books Worth Reading Skyscrapers: A History of the World’s Most Extraordinary Buildings By Judith Dupré. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 176 pages [...]
Gwarlingo’s 26 Favorite Art, Photography, Film & Design Books of 2013
As an ex-librarian and book collector, one of my favorite things to do is to ferret out new publications and share them with readers. Whenever I'm traveling, I scour local bookstores and museum shops for interesting books. (Carting heavy art tomes home on an airplane is a familiar [...]
Chop-Suey, Automats, & Diamondback Terrapin: Michael Lesy & Lisa Stoffer on Dining in America
The chefs of Sherry's restaurant at luncheon in 1902 (Photo courtesy the Museum of the City of New York, the Byron Company Collection. Click to Enlarge) Wisconsin Death Trip My first introduction to the work of Michael Lesy was a chance encounter many years ago with his classic [...]
Writer Howard Mansfield on Clutter, Home Improvement & the Most Hated House on the Block
Lisa Dahl, Suburban Export, household cardboard, 1.5 x 2 x 2 inches (each), installation variable, 2011-12. View the finished installation Suburban Export here. (In-Progress photo of installation by Lisa Dahl courtesy the artist) "Everyone, rich or poor, deserves a shelter for the soul." -Samuel Mockbee The [...]
Daily Rituals: How Artists Create (And Avoid Creating) Their Art
"In my personal life, if I don't have a project, I don't have any discipline," says performance artist Marina Abramovic. Discipline and daily ritual were one of the subjects of her 2002 piece The House with the Ocean View. Abramovic spent 12 straight days living on three open platforms in [...]
Postcards from a Prison Teacher
2.3 million people are currently imprisoned in the United States, that's one out of every 100 adults---more per capita than any other country in the world. (Repressive China is a distant second, with one in 1,000 adults incarcerated.) As Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi explain in the introduction to their [...]
I Never Knew How Blue Blueness Could Be: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets
Helena Almeida, Inhabited Painting, 1975.© Helena Almeida, courtesy Serralves Foundation Collection, Oporto, Portugal One of the joys of Gwarlingo is meeting art lovers from around the world. Sigrun Hodne and I found each other early in Gwarlingo's short history, and though she lives in Norway, and I [...]
Architect Says: Less Is More. Less Is a Bore.
Tadao Ando, Church of the Light, 1989. Osaka, Japan. Philadelphia is a city awash with memorable architecture, so it's fitting that I stumbled across The Architect Says: Quotes, Quips, and Words of Wisdom at the Philadelphia Museum of Art's store, which offers a well-curated assortment of books inside of [...]
“Naughty Nun” Mary Johnson on Existential Crisis & Mother Teresa
Sister Donata (Mary Johnson) with Mother Teresa at her first profession of vows, in Rome, June 8, 1980 When Mary Johnson left Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity after 20 years of service, she had to learn to pump her own gasoline, to [...]
Ai Weiwei’s Little Black Book
Ai Weiwei with his new book Weiwei-isms, edited by Larry Warsh I didn't expect a publication that has been touted as one of the "Best Art Books of 2012" to stand just six inches tall and contain only two photographs. But as Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's new book [...]
Soaring High: The Art of Auto-Giros, Rocket Planes, Airships, & Strange Aircraft
It's Friday and another week has almost come and gone without a mid-week post on Gwarlingo. Apologies to Gwarlingo readers for neglecting everyone but the poets the past 14 days. I've been traveling on business and working on an exciting (arts-related) project down in Philadelphia. While Gwarlingo is my [...]
The Complete Creative Part 4 : Christian McEwen on the Art of Happiness
"What has been planted is the I want! I want! of advertising, which thrives on envy and dissatisfaction. Advertising tells us that happiness can be bought if we will only put our minds to it." (William Blake, "I Want! I Want!" from For Children: The Gates of Paradise, 1793. [...]
What is Love? Joan Wickersham’s The News from Spain Has Some Surprising Answers
Joan Wickersham (Photo by Nicholas Latimer) “A story . . . can become close, airless. You cannot stay shut up in your own head anymore; you need a break, some fresh air. Let’s go outside: We’ll take a walk, down a New York City side street. It’s [...]
15+ Books Worth Reading from Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine
A Nancy Drew collection at Hello Hello Books in Rockland, Maine (Photo by Lacy Simons) I do quite a bit of traveling for Gwarlingo these days and one of the best things about being on the road is discovering out-of-the way, independent bookshops. For me, walking into a [...]
Rajesh Parameswaran’s Dazzling Tales of Captivity & Freedom : I Am An Executioner
If like me, you find most summer reading lists too beachy and lacking in inspiration, Rajesh Parameswaran's I Am an Executioner: Love Stories is the perfect antidote. (After all, our brains don't go on holiday just because we do). Over the past week, I've been savoring the imaginative, moving stories [...]
What Makes a Healthy Life? Writer Roger King Explores Love & Fatigue in America
"I always thought the novel, with it’s ability to show lives in their full emotional and social complexity was the best medium for understanding and illuminating the world. I thought it more important than any non-fiction I could write as an academic, or journalist, or 'expert'; It seems an almost [...]