Download or read book Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds written by Leslie Umberger and published by Princeton Architectural Press. This book was released on 2007-10-04 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The need to personalize our surroundings is a defining human characteristic. For some this need becomes a compulsion to transform their personal surroundings into works of art. The John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, has undertaken the mission to preserve these environments, which are presented for the first time in Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds. This colorful and inspiring book features the work of twenty-two vernacular artists whose locales, personal histories, and reasons for art-making vary widely but who all share a powerful connection to the home as art. Featured projects range from art environments that remain intact, such as Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in California, tosites lost over the years such as Emery Blagdon's six hundred elaborate "Healing Machines," made of copper, aluminum, tinfoil, magnets, ribbons, farm-machinery parts, painted light bulbs, beads, coffee-can lids, and more. Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds is the first book to explore these spectacularly offbeat spaces in detail.From "Original Rhinestone Cowboy" Loy Bowlin's wall-to-wall glitter-and-foil living room to the concrete bestiary of "witch of Fox Point" Mary Nohl, each artist and project is described in detail through a wealth of visuals and text. Sublime Spaces and Visionary Worlds reminds us that our decorative choices tell the world not just what we like but who we are.
Download or read book Sublime Spaces Visionary Worlds written by Leslie Umberger and published by Princeton Architectural Press; John Michael Kohler Arts Center. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Præsentation af værker af kunstnerne: Levi Fisher Ames, Jacob Baker, Emery Blagdon, Loy Bowlin, David Butler, Nek Chand, John Ehn, Nick Engelbert, Tom Every, Ernest Hüpeden, Peter Jodacy, Mary Nohl, Frank Oebser, Clarence Mosteller Powell, Carl Peterson, Sam Rodia, Dr. Charles Smith, Fred Smith, James Tellen, Eugene von Bruenchenhein, Stella Waitzkin, Albert Zahn
Download or read book Public Performances written by Jack Santino and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2017-12-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Public Performances offers a deep and wide-ranging exploration of relationships among genres of public performance and of the underlying political motivations they share. Illustrating the connections among three themes—the political, the carnivalesque, and the ritualesque—this volume provides rich and comprehensive insight into public performance as an assertion of political power. Contributors consider how public genres of performance express not only celebration but also dissent, grief, and remembrance; examine the permeability of the boundaries between genres; and analyze the approval or regulation of such events by municipalities and other institutions. Where the particular use of public space is not sanctioned or where that use meets with hostility from institutions or represents a critique of them, performers are effectively reclaiming public space to make public statements on their own terms—an act of popular sovereignty. Through these concepts, Public Performances distinguishes the sometimes overlapping dimensions of public symbolic display. Carnival, and thus the carnivalesque, is understood to possess tacit social permission for unconventional or even deviant performance, on the grounds that normal social order will resume when the performance concludes. Ritual, and the ritualesque, leverages a deeper symbolic sensibility, one believed—or at least intended—by the participants to effect transformative, longer-term change. Contributors: Roger D. Abrahams, John Borgonovo, Laurent Sébastien Fournier, Lisa Gilman, Barbara Graham, David Harnish, Samuel Kinser, Scott Magelssen, Elena Martinez, Pamela Moro, Beverly J. Stoeltje, Daniel Wojcik, Dorothy L. Zinn
Download or read book American Folk Art 2 volumes written by Kristin G. Congdon and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-03-19 with total page 789 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Folk art is as varied as it is indicative of person and place, informed by innovation and grounded in cultural context. The variety and versatility of 300 American folk artists is captured in this collection of informative and thoroughly engaging essays. American Folk Art: A Regional Reference offers a collection of fascinating essays on the life and work of 300 individual artists. Some of the men and women profiled in these two volumes are well known, while others are important practitioners who have yet to receive the notice they merit. Because many of the artists in both categories have a clear identity with their land and culture, the work is organized by geographical region and includes an essay on each region to help make connections visible. There is also an introductory essay on U.S. folk art as a whole. Those writing about folk art to date tend to view each artist as either traditional or innovative. One of the major contributions of this work is that it demonstrates that folk artists more often exhibit both traits; they are grounded in their cultural context and creative in the way they make work their own. Such insights expand the study of folk art even as they readjust readers' understanding of who folk artists are.
Download or read book The Secret Kingdom written by Barb Rosenstock and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2021-06-15 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The incredible story of the world’s largest visionary environment: the Rock Garden of Chandigarh, kept secret by outsider artist Nek Chand for fifteen years. After the partition of India in 1947, Nek Chand Saini settled in the city of Chandigarh, with nothing but stories brought from his homeland. Dismayed at his stark new surroundings, Nek began collecting river rocks, broken glass, and cracked water pots found on the roadside. He cleared a section of jungle and for seven years he stockpiled odds and ends. They were castoffs and rubbish to everyone else, but to Nek, they were treasures. He began to build a labyrinth of curving paths, mosaics, and repeating patterns: his very own tribute to the winding village of his youth, a hidden land of stories. Nek kept his kingdom secret for fifteen years, until a government crew stumbled upon it and sought to destroy it. But local fans agreed in awe: the Rock Garden had to be protected. Author Barb Rosenstock introduces readers to the outsider artist’s stunning creation, while Claire A. Nivola’s illustrations bring to life the land’s natural beauty and the surreal world Nek coaxed from his wild landscape.
Download or read book Sabato Rodia s Towers in Watts written by Luisa Del Giudice and published by Fordham University Press. This book was released on 2014-06-15 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The extraordinary Watts Towers were created over the course of three decades by a determined, single-minded artist, Sabato Rodia, a highly remarkable Italian immigrant laborer who wanted to do “something big.” Now a National Historic Landmark and internationally renowned destination, the Watts Towers in Los Angeles are both a personal artistic expression and a collective symbol of Nuestro Pueblo—Our Town/Our People. Featuring fresh and innovative examinations that mine deeper and broader than ever before, Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts is a much anticipated revisitation of the man and his towers. In 1919, Sabato Rodia purchased a triangular plot of land in a multiethnic, working-class, semi-rural district. He set to work on an unusual building project in his own yard. By night, Rodia dreamed and excogitated, and by day he built. He experimented with form, color, texture, cement mixtures, and construction techniques. He built, tore down, and re-built. As an artist completely possessed by his work, he was often derided as an incomprehensible crazy man. Providing a multifaceted, holistic understanding of Rodia, the towers, and the cultural/social/physical environment within which the towers and their maker can be understood, Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts compiles essays from twenty authors, offering perspectives from the arts, the communities involved in the preservation and interpretation of the towers, and the academy. Most of the contributions originated at two interdisciplinary conferences held in Los Angeles and in Italy: “Art & Migration: Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts, Los Angeles” and “The Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative: Art, Migrations, Development.” The Watts Towers are wondrous objects of art and architecture as well as the expression and embodiment of the resolve of a singular artistic genius to do something great. But they also recount the heroic civic efforts (art and social action) to save them, both of which continue to this day to evoke awe and inspiration. Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts presents a well-rounded tribute to one man’s tenacious labor of love. A portion of royalties from this book will go to support the work of the Watts Towers Arts Center.
Download or read book Self Taught Outsider and Folk Art written by Betty-Carol Sellen and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-02-09 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much has changed in the world of self-taught art since the millennium. Many of the recognized "masters" have died and new artists have emerged. Many galleries have closed but few new ones have opened, as artists and dealers increasingly sell through websites and social media. The growth and popularity of auction houses have altered the relationship between artists and collectors. In its third edition, this book provides updated information on artists, galleries, museums, auctions, organizations and publications for both experienced and aspiring collectors of self-taught, outsider and folk art. Gallery and museum entries are organized geographically and alphabetically by state and city.
Download or read book Ronald Johnson s Modernist Collage Poetry written by R. Hair and published by Springer. This book was released on 2010-12-20 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a critical examination of the collage poetics of Ronald Johnson, this book sets out to understand Johnson's poetry in the context of the "New American" collage tradition, stretching from Ezra Pound to Louis Zukofsky and beyond. Additionally, the book assesses Johnson's work in relation to wider questions concerning literary chronologies, especially the discontinuities commonly seen to exist between nineteenth-century Romantic and twentieth-century modernist literary forms.
Download or read book An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era written by Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era explores the period between the late nineteenth and twenty-first centuries and reflects on the archaeological theory and practice of the recent past. This book argues that the materiality of our times, and particularly its ruins and rubbish, reveals something profound and disturbing about modern societies. It examines the political, ethical, aesthetic, and epistemological foundations of contemporary archaeology and characterizes the excess of the contemporary period through its material traces. This book remains the first attempt at describing the contemporary era from an archaeological point of view. Global in scope, the book brings together case studies from every continent and considers sources from peripheral and rarely considered traditions, meanwhile engaging in interdisciplinary dialogue with philosophy, anthropology, history, and geography. This new edition includes the latest developments in the field, both methodological and theoretical, and adds new and exciting case studies to engage students. It also covers some of the most pressing issues of the present, as they are being addressed by archaeologists, such as pandemics, the antiracist movement, the global rise of reactionary populism, the ecological crisis, and climate change. An Archaeology of the Contemporary Era is essential reading for students and practitioners of the contemporary past, historical archaeology, and archaeological theory. It will also be of interest to anybody concerned with globalization, modernity, and the Anthropocene.
Download or read book Britannica Book of the Year 2008 written by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. and published by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.. This book was released on 2008-05-01 with total page 882 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This yearbook presents information on the dates, people, events, and world affairs of 2007. The section entitled "Britannica World Data," updated annually, presents geographic, demographic, and economic details.
Download or read book Re Enchantment written by James Elkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-01-13 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume includes an introduction and two final, synoptic essays, as well as contributions from some of the most prominent thinkers on religion and art including Thierry De Duve, Georges Didi-Huberman, Gerhard Wolff, Jack Caputo and Jean-Luc Marion.
Download or read book Gas Light Electricity written by Shena McAuliffe and published by Permafrost Prize. This book was released on 2020 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fleet-footed and capricious, the essays in Glass, Light & Electricity wander through landscapes both familiar and unfamiliar, finding them equal parts magical and toxic. They explore and merge public and private history through lyric meditations that use research, association, and metaphor to examine subjects as diverse as neon signs, scalping, heartbreak, and seizures. The winner of the 2019 Permafrost Prize in nonfiction, Shena McAuliffe expands the creative possibilities of form.
Download or read book The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture written by Carol Crown and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2013-06-03 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Folk art is one of the American South's most significant areas of creative achievement, and this comprehensive yet accessible reference details that achievement from the sixteenth century through the present. This volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores the many forms of aesthetic expression that have characterized southern folk art, including the work of self-taught artists, as well as the South's complex relationship to national patterns of folk art collecting. Fifty-two thematic essays examine subjects ranging from colonial portraiture, Moravian material culture, and southern folk pottery to the South's rich quilt-making traditions, memory painting, and African American vernacular art, and 211 topical essays include profiles of major folk and self-taught artists in the region.
Download or read book Place Memory and Healing written by Ömür Harmanşah and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Place, Memory, and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments investigates the complex and deep histories of places, how they served as sites of memory and belonging for local communities over the centuries, and how they were appropriated and monumentalized in the hands of the political elites. Focusing on Anatolian rock monuments carved into the living rock at watery landscapes during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, this book develops an archaeology of place as a theory of cultural landscapes and as an engaged methodology of fieldwork in order to excavate the genealogies of places. Advocating that archaeology can contribute substantively to the study of places in many fields of research and engagement within the humanities and the social sciences, this book seeks to move beyond the oft-conceived notion of places as fixed and unchanging, and argues that places are always unfinished, emergent, and hybrid. Rock cut monuments of Anatolian antiquity are discussed in the historical and micro-regional context of their making at the time of the Hittite Empire and its aftermath, while the book also investigates how such rock-cut places, springs, and caves are associated with new forms of storytelling, holy figures, miracles, and healing in their post-antique life. Anybody wishing to understand places of cultural significance both archaeologically as well as through current theoretical lenses such as heritage studies, ethnography of landscapes, social memory, embodied and sensory experience of the world, post-colonialism, political ecology, cultural geography, sustainability, and globalization will find the case studies and research within this book a doorway to exploring places in new and rewarding ways.
Download or read book A Mythic Obsession written by Tom Kupsh and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2008-06-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In addition to hundreds of whimsical welded sculptures, Tom Every poured most of his effort into the Forevertron, the world’s largest sculpture built by a single person, and in the process, he discovered his alter ego: Dr. Evermor. With the full participation of Tom and Eleanor Every, Every’s amazing life is keenly documented, including never published family photos, sketches, and personal memories, producing a detailed portrait of a unique self-taught artist. From a very early age, Every collected, modified, and resold cast-off industrial material. His work as a salvager led him to Alex Jordan Jr., creator of the House on the Rock. When the time is right (and only Dr. Evermor will know when) the famous, enigmatic scientist will climb the winding staircase of the Forevertron and enter its egg-shaped travel chamber, power up the dynamos and flip on the thrusters, and fly away on a “highball to heaven,” propelled by an electromagnetic lighting force beam. Or so the story goes. Anyone who has spent time at the elaborate visionary environment created by Tom Every has heard some variation of the Evermor myth. Lesser known is the story behind the story, the fascinating history of this one-of-a-kind creative spirit.
Download or read book Lenore Tawney written by Karen Patterson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-09-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have seen an enormous surge of interest in fiber arts, with works made of thread on display in art museums around the world. But this art form only began to transcend its origins as a humble craft in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it wasn’t until the 1950s and 1960s that artists used the fiber arts to build critical practices that challenged the definitions of painting, drawing, and sculpture. One of those artists was Lenore Tawney (1907–2007). Raised and trained in Chicago before she moved to New York, Tawney had a storied career. She was known for employing an ancient Peruvian gauze weave technique to create a painterly effect that appeared to float in space rather than cling to the wall, as well as for being one of the first artists to blend sculptural techniques with weaving practices and, in the process, pioneered a new direction in fiber art. Despite her prominence on the New York art scene, however, she has only recently begun to receive her due from the greater art world. Accompanying a retrospective at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, this catalog features a comprehensive biography of Tawney, additional essays on her work, and two hundred full-color illustrations, making it of interest to contemporary artists, art historians, and the growing audience for fiber art. Copublished with the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.
Download or read book Cultural Heritage and the Future written by Cornelius Holtorf and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultural Heritage and the Future brings together an international group of scholars and experts to consider the relationship between cultural heritage and the future. Drawing on case studies from around the world, the contributing authors insist that cultural heritage and the future are intimately linked and that the development of futures thinking should be a priority for academics, students and those working in the wider professional heritage sector. Until recently, the future has never attracted substantial research and debate within heritage studies and heritage management, and this book addresses this gap by offering a balance of theoretical and empirical content that will stimulate multidisciplinary debate in the burgeoning field of critical heritage studies. Cultural Heritage and the Future questions the role of heritage in future making and will be of great relevance to academics and students working in the fields of museum and heritage studies, archaeology, anthropology, architecture, conservation studies, sociology, history and geography. Those working in the heritage professions will also find much to interest them within the pages of this book.
