The Art of Amy Brown


Amy Brown - 2003
    It was published by Chimera Publishing in 2003. The book is 157 pages of art, with a commentary by Amy Brown for every piece of artwork. The Art of Amy Brown has an introduction by the well-known author Charles de Lint. There are three editions of this book—a paperback, a hardcover, and a special leather-bound edition limited to 750 copies, which will be signed by Amy Brown and Charles de Lint.

Live Beautiful


Athena Calderone - 2020
    In Live Beautiful, the highly anticipated design book by Athena Calderone, the EyeSwoon creator taps into her international network of interior decorators, fashion designers, and tastemakers to reveal how carefully crafted interiors come together. She also opens the doors to two of her own residences.   With each homeowner, Calderone explores the initial spark of inspiration that incited their design journey. She then breaks down the details of the rooms—like layered textures and patterns, collected pieces, and customized vignettes—and offers helpful tips on how to bring these elevated elements into your own space. Filled with gorgeous photography by Nicole Franzen, Live Beautiful is both a showpiece of exquisite design and a guide to creating a home that’s thoughtfully put together.

Haunted Air: Anonymous Halloween photographs from c. 1875–1955


Ossian Brown - 2010
    These are the pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementos of the treasured, now unrecognizable, and others. The roots of Halloween lie in the ancient pre-Christian Celtic festival of Samhain, a feast to mark the death of the old year and the birth of the new. It was believed that on this night the veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead grew thin and ruptured, allowing spirits to pass through and walk unseen but not unheard amongst men. The advent of Christianity saw the pagan festival subsumed in All Souls' Day, when across Europe the dead were mourned and venerated. Children and the poor, often masked or in outlandish costume, wandered the night begging "soul cakes" in exchange for prayers, and fires burned to keep malevolent phantoms at bay. From Europe, the haunted tradition would quickly take root and flourish in the fertile soil of the New World. Feeding hungrily on fresh lore, consuming half-remembered tales of its own shadowy origins and rituals, Halloween was reborn in America. The pumpkin supplanted the carved turnip; costumes grew ever stranger, and celebrants both rural and urban seized gleefully on the festival's intoxicating, lawless spirit. For one wild night, the dead stared into the faces of the living, and the living, ghoulishly masked and clad in tattered backwoods baroque, stared back.

Portraits of the Mind: Visualizing the Brain from Antiquity to the 21st Century


Carl Schoonover - 2010
    These black-and-white and vibrantly colored images, many resembling abstract art, are employed daily by scientists around the world, but most have never before been seen by the general public. Each chapter addresses a different set of techniques for studying the brain as revealed through the images, and each is introduced by a leading scientist in that field of study. Author Carl Schoonover’s captions provide detailed explanations of each image as well as the major insights gained by scientists over the course of the past 20 years. Accessible to a wide audience, this book reveals the elegant methods applied to study the mind, giving readers a peek at its innermost workings, helping us to understand them, and offering clues about what may lie ahead. Praise for Portraits of the Mind: "An odyssey through the brain, illuminated by a rainbow" --New York Times "Stunning images" --Scientific American "The collection of images in the new book Portraits of the Mind is truly impressive . . . The mix of history, science and art is terrific." -Wired.com "History, science, and art come together to provide a unique perspective on what's going on upstairs." --New Yorker.com "No knowledge of the source or subject matter of these images is necessary; the book is justified by their beauty alone." --Science "A remarkable new book"- -Discover.com "John Keats's insistence that truth is beauty is exemplified by Carl Schoonover's wonderful book Portraits of the Mind. Since one cannot understand the present without examining the past, this book offers a delightful and instructive way of accomplishing just that. I enthusiastically recommend this beautiful book both to students of brain science and to lovers of art." -Eric R. Kandel, MD, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2000; University Professor at Columbia; Fred Kavli Professor and Director, Kavli Institute for Brain Science; Senior Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute; and author of In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of Mind "Portraits of the Mind achieves a rare combination of beauty and knowledge. Its images of the brain are mesmerizing, from medieval engravings to modern visualizations as gorgeously abstract as anything by Rothko or de Kooning. And in explaining the nature of these images, this book also delivers an enlightening, up-to-date history of neuroscience." -Carl Zimmer, author of Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain-and How It Changed the World and The Mind's Eye Goes Blind: Fifteen Journeys Through the Brain "Portraits of the Mind is a remarkable book that combines beautifully reproduced illustrations of the nervous system as it has been visualized over the centuries, as well as lively and authoritative commentaries by some of today's leading neuroscientists. It will be enjoyed by professionals and general readers alike." --Dale Purves, MD, Professor of Neurobiology, Psychology and Neuroscience; and Philosophy at Duke University

Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture


Witold Rybczynski - 1992
    Home, Witold Rybczynski seduced readers into a new appreciation of the spaces they live in. He also introduced us to "an unerringly lucid writer who knows how to translate architectural ideas into layman's terms" (The Dallas Morning News). Rybczynski's vast knowledge, his sense of wonder, and his elegantly uncluttered prose shine on every page of his latest meditation on the art of building. Looking Around is about architecture as an art of compromise - between beauty and function, aspiration and engineering, builders and clients. It is the story of the Seagram Building in New York and the Wexner Center for the Visual Arts in Columbus, Ohio - a museum that opened without a single painting on view, so that critics could better appreciate its design. But what of the visitors who want a building that displays art well? What of those who work in the building? Looking Around explores the notion of the architect as superstar and assesses giants from Palladio to Michael Graves, styles from classicism to high tech. It demonstrates how architecture actually works - or doesn't - in corporate headquarters, airports, private homes, and the special buildings designed to represent our civilization. For all its erudition, Looking Around is also bracingly straightforward. Rybczynski looks closely and critically at structures that may once have dazzled us with their ostentation and expense, and sees them as triumphs or failures - of aesthetic ideals and of lasting function. This is a fascinating and illuminating book about an art form integral to our lives.

Affordable Interior Design: High-End Tips for Any Budget


Betsy Helmuth - 2019
     Homeowners and renters of all means dream of having a beautiful home. The media makes it look so easy, but many of us have less to work with and still long to live in style. Affordable Interior Design makes luxury an affordable reality. In this DIY home decorating handbook, Helmuth reveals insider tips and her tried-and-tested methods for choosing colors, creating a gallery wall, how to use accent tables, entry benches, rugs, and more! Helmuth has shared her affordable design advice and step-by-step approaches with millions through live teaching workshops, guest columns, television appearances, and interviews. Now, she has distilled her expertise into this practical guide. The chapters follow her secret design formula and include creating a design budget, mapping out floor plans, selecting a color palette, and accessorizing like a stylist. It’s time to start living in the home of your dreams without maxing out your credit cards. Learn how with Affordable Interior Design!

Creative Block: Get Unstuck, Discover New Ideas. Advice Projects from 50 Successful Artists


Danielle Krysa - 2014
    No longer! This chunky blockbuster of a book is chock-full of solutions for overcoming all manner of artistic impediment. The blogger behind The Jealous Curator interviews 50 successful international artists working in different mediums and mines their insights on how to conquer self-doubt, stay motivated, and get new ideas to flow. Each artist offers a tried-and-true exercise—from road trips to 30-day challenges to cataloging the medicine cabinet— that will kick-start the creative process. Abundantly visual with more than 300 images showcasing these artists' resulting work, Creative Block is a vital ally to students, artists, and creative professionals.

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative


Austin Kleon - 2012
    That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.

Flower Color Guide


Darroch Putnam - 2018
    To help you find what you are looking for, Flower Color Guide is the first reference book to organize flower types by color, with an emphasis on seasonality and creative color schemes - and the results are stunning in their sheer variety. What Pantone is to color, Flower Color Guide is to flowers.Showcasing 400 flowers at their peak, with stunning photography taken by Putnam & Putnam in their Brooklyn studio, this guide includes an appendix featuring perforated pages, with tips on flower care, notes on how to prepare vessels and a list of suggested color schemes. A great gift to give, or to have for oneself, the book speaks to the most seasoned flower enthusiasts as well as those just beginning to explore the possibilities of arranging flowers.Michael and Darroch Putnam have built a reputation for romantic, dramatic floral arrangements and installations using color as their guiding principle - here, they share their knowledge with readers worldwide: "This is the book we wished we had when we started doing flowers."

Reading the Forested Landscape: A Natural History of New England


Tom Wessels - 1997
    What exactly is the meaning of all those stone walls in the middle of the forest? Why do beech and birch trees have smooth bark when the bark of all other northern species is rough? How do you tell the age of a beaver pond and determine if beavers still live there? Why are pine trees dominant in one patch of forest and maples in another? What happened to the American chestnut? Turn to this book for the answers, and no walk in the woods will ever be the same.