Modern Nature


Derek Jarman - 1991
    Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness.Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life: his childhood, his time as a young gay man in the 1960s, his renowned career as an artist, writer and film-maker. It is at once a lament for a lost generation, an unabashed celebration of gay sexuality, and a devotion to all that is living.

Happy by Design: How to create a home that boosts your health & happiness


Victoria Harrison - 2018
    From the paint colour that's been named the happiest, to the science of getting a good night's sleep, Happy by Design offers bite-sized and affordable design ideas that are accessible to all, from a young renter in an urban apartment to a busy family in their own home.By quizzing experts from NASA scientists to colour gurus, Victoria Harrison has devised a Happy Home Programme to help everyone transform their living spaces and put wellbeing at the heart of their homes. With fun and easy ideas for each room in the home, the programme is easy to follow and packed with tips and inspiration to help everyone live the happiest life possible.

Timeless Wire Weaving: The Complete Course


Lisa Barth - 2014
    The projects are built around a focal cabochon and incorporate seed beads and crystals in imaginative ways. Designers learn to make the jewelry shown in the book, and they also use the techniques learned to create innovative jewelry pieces of their own.

User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play


Cliff Kuang - 2019
    Spanning over a century of sweeping changes, from women's rights to the Great Depression to World War II to the rise of the digital era, this book unpacks the ways in which the world has been--and continues to be--remade according to the principles of the once-obscure discipline of user-experience design.In this essential text, Kuang and Fabricant map the hidden rules of the designed world and shed light on how those rules have caused our world to change--an underappreciated but essential history that's pieced together for the first time. Combining the expertise and insight of a leading journalist and a pioneering designer, User Friendly provides a definitive, thoughtful, and practical perspective on a topic that has rapidly gone from arcane to urgent to inescapable. In User Friendly, Kuang and Fabricant tell the whole story for the first time--and you'll never interact with technology the same way again.

Dilla Time


Dan Charnas - 2022
    He died at the age of thirty-two, and in his lifetime he never had a pop hit. Yet since his death, J Dilla has become a demigod: revered by jazz musicians and rap icons from Robert Glasper to Kendrick Lamar; memorialized in symphonies and taught at universities. And at the core of this adulation is innovation: a new kind of musical time-feel that he created on a drum machine, but one that changed the way “traditional” musicians play.In Dilla Time, Dan Charnas chronicles the life of James DeWitt Yancey, from his gifted childhood in Detroit, to his rise as a Grammy-nominated hip-hop producer, to the rare blood disease that caused his premature death; and follows the people who kept him and his ideas alive. He also rewinds the histories of American rhythms: from the birth of soul in Dilla’s own “Motown,” to funk, techno, and disco. Here, music is a story of Black culture in America and of what happens when human and machine times are synthesized into something new. Dilla Time is a different kind of book about music, a visual experience with graphics that build those concepts step by step for fans and novices alike, teaching us to “see” and feel rhythm in a unique and enjoyable way.Dilla’s beats, startling some people with their seeming “sloppiness,” were actually the work of a perfectionist almost spiritually devoted to his music. This is the story of the man and his machines, his family, friends, partners, and celebrity collaborators. Culled from more than 150 interviews about one of the most important and influential musical figures of the past hundred years, Dilla Time is a book as delightfully detail-oriented and unique as J Dilla’s music itself.

Say Yes: Discover the Surprising Life Beyond the Death of a Dream


Scott Erickson - 2022
    How do I even keep going?" When the dreams for our life die, our vision of who we hoped to become often dies too. That's when The Voice of Giving Up appears.Visual artist and spiritual director Scott Erickson has had long midnight conversations with The Voice of Giving Up, and he knows how anxiety and depression make The Voice especially loud. But he's discovered that our darkest moments are sometimes doorways to a deeper, more joy-filled journey of recovering who we are, why we're here, and why the future bursts with possibilities if we are willing to say yes to life's brightest gifts.In Say Yes, Scott helps you learn how to reawaken your deepest desires, disempower your greatest fears, and identify the destructive narratives holding you back. Combined with Scott's beautiful, thought-provoking illustrations, this is a profound exploration of beginning again after:Disappointment at how life is turning outSuspecting we are not prepared or smart enoughLosing hope that change is possible and that pain can have a purposeTake the first step to gain the gentle yet powerful tools you need, and say yes to what lies ahead today.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World


Elaine Scarry - 1985
    The book is an analysis of physical suffering and its relation to the numerous vocabularies and cultural forces--literary, political, philosophical, medical, religious--that confront it. Elaine Scarry bases her study on a wide range of sources: literature and art, medical case histories, documents on torture compiled by Amnesty International, legal transcripts of personal injury trials, and military and strategic writings by such figures as Clausewitz, Churchill, Liddell Hart, and Kissinger, She weaves these into her discussion with an eloquence, humanity, and insight that recall the writings of Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre. Scarry begins with the fact of pain's inexpressibility. Not only is physical pain enormously difficult to describe in words--confronted with it, Virginia Woolf once noted, "language runs dry"--it also actively destroys language, reducing sufferers in the most extreme instances to an inarticulate state of cries and moans. Scarry analyzes the political ramifications of deliberately inflicted pain, specifically in the cases of torture and warfare, and shows how to be fictive. From these actions of "unmaking" Scarry turns finally to the actions of "making"--the examples of artistic and cultural creation that work against pain and the debased uses that are made of it. Challenging and inventive, The Body in Pain is landmark work that promises to spark widespread debate.

Proust Was a Neuroscientist


Jonah Lehrer - 2007
    Its greatest detriment to the world has been its unfettered desire to play with and alter them: science for science's sake, as if it offered the only path to knowledge.According to Lehrer, when it comes to the human brain, the world of art unraveled such mysteries long before the neuroscientists: "This book is about artists who anticipated the discoveries of science who discovered truths about the human mind that science is only now discovering." 'Proust Was a Neuroscientist' is a dazzling inquiry into the nature of the mind and of the truths harvested by its first explorers: artists like Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Auguste Escoffier, Marcel Proust, Paul Cozanne, Igor Stravinsky, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf. What they understood intuitively and expressed through their respective art forms -- the fallibility of memory, the malleability of the brain, the subtleties of vision, and the deep structure of language -- science has only now begun to measure and confirm. Blending biography, criticism, and science writing, Lehrer offers a lucid examination of eight artistic thinkers who lit the path toward a greater understanding of the human mind and a deeper appreciation of the ineffable mystery of life.

High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky


Joshua David - 2011
    The story of how it came to be is a remarkable one: two young citizens with no prior experience in planning and development collaborated with their neighbors, elected officials, artists, local business owners, and leaders of burgeoning movements in horticulture and landscape architecture to create a park celebrated worldwide as a model for creatively designed, socially vibrant, ecologically sound public space.Joshua David and Robert Hammond met in 1999 at a community board meeting to consider the fate of the High Line. Built in the 1930s, it carried freight trains to the West Side when the area was defined by factories and warehouses. But when trains were replaced by truck transport, the High Line became obsolete. By century's end it was a rusty, forbidding ruin. Plants grew between the tracks, giving it a wild and striking beauty.David and Hammond loved the ruin and saw in it an opportunity to create a new way to experience their city. Over ten years, they did so. In this candid and inspiring book— lavishly illustrated—they tell how they relied on skill, luck, and good timing: a crucial court ruling, an inspiring design contest, the enthusiasm of Mayor Bloomberg, the concern for urban planning issues following 9/11. Now the High Line—a half-mile expanse of plants, paths, staircases, and framed vistas—runs through a transformed West Side and reminds us that extraordinary things are possible when creative people work together for the common good.

Juxtapoz Illustration


Roger Gastman - 2007
    In this volume artists such as Mode 2, KozynDan, Mike Giant, James Jean, Evan Hecox, Grotesk, Alex Pardee and Morning Breath are briefly profiled, then allowed the space to let their work do the talking.

Tuhami: Portrait of a Moroccan


Vincent Crapanzano - 1980
    A master of magic and a superb story-teller, Tuhami lives in a dank, windowless hovel near the kiln where he works. Nightly he suffers visitations from the demons and saints who haunt his life, and he seeks, with crippling ambivalence, liberation from 'A'isha Qandisha, the she-demon. In a sensitive and bold experiment in interpretive ethnography, Crapanzano presents Tuhami's bizarre account of himself and his world. In so doing, Crapanzano draws on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and symbolism to reflect upon the nature of reality and truth and to probe the limits of anthropology itself. Tuhami has become one of the most important and widely cited representatives of a new understanding of the whole discipline of anthropology.

Failed It!: How to Turn Mistakes Into Ideas and Other Advice for Successfully Screwing Up


Erik Kessels - 2016
    Erik Kessels celebrates imperfection and failure and shows why they are an essential part of the creative process.Failed it! celebrates the power of mistakes and shows how they can enrich the creative process. This is part photobook and part guide to loosening up and making mistakes to take the fear out of failure and encourage experimentation.It showcases the best and most hilarious examples of imperfection and failure across a broad range of creative forms, including art, design, photography, architecture and product design, to inspire and encourage creatives to embrace and celebrate their mistakes.We live in an era when everyone is striving for perfection and we have become afraid of failure, which limits our potential. Mistakes help us find new ways of thinking and innovative solutions, and failures can change our perceptions and open up new ways of looking things. This book transforms mistakes from something to be embarrassed about into a cause for celebration.It includes over 150 visual examples drawn from Kessels personal collection of artworks and found photographs, along with tips, quotes, anecdotes and wisdom for celebrating with failure. To quote Kessels: 'the ubiquity of Apple + Z, means that we can literally undo any mistake before it has had time to breathe, be considered and — perhaps — evolve into something else: a fascinating, strange, provocative or even original piece of work. This book asks readers to embrace their fuck-ups, learn from them and celebrate their tawdry glory'.

The Creative Call: An Artist's Response to the Way of the Spirit


Janice Elsheimer - 2001
    Maybe you once had a passion for playing the piano or violin--a passion that is still flickering somewhere deep inside you. You may have a knack for photography, drawing, gardening, cooking, or some other creative gift. Or you may long to express yourself creatively, but have yet to discover your unique talents. Your creativity was meant be used. Whether you are an artist who has already identified your gifts or you believe that you have artistic talent that has never been developed, working through this book will help you grow closer to becoming the person God has designed you to be. *LEARN TO CALL ON THE HOLY SPIRIT AS YOUR SOURCE OF INSPIRATION* EXERCISE YOUR ARTISTIC GIFT REGULARLY AND BEGIN TO THINK OF YOURSELF AS AN ARTIST.* DEVELOP THE HABIT OF JOURNALING AS A WAY TO REALIZE UNLOCKED CREATIVITY AN EIGHT-WEEK PROGRAM FOR FULLY DEVELOPING YOUR ARTISTIC GIFTS AND ENTERING INTO A CLOSER UNION WITH GOD. INCLUDES A RETREAT GUIDE.FOR INDIVIDUAL USE OR GROUP STUDY.

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention


Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - 1996
    The author's objective is to offer an understanding of what leads to these moments, be it the excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab, so that knowledge can be used to enrich people's lives. Drawing on 100 interviews with exceptional people, from biologists and physicists to politicians and business leaders, poets and artists, as well as his 30 years of research on the subject, Csikszentmihalyi uses his famous theory to explore the creative process. He discusses such ideas as why creative individuals are often seen as selfish and arrogant, and why the tortured genius is largely a myth. Most important, he clearly explains why creativity needs to be cultivated and is necessary for the future of our country, if not the world.

Syllabus: Notes From an Accidental Professor


Lynda Barry - 2014
    She believes that anyone can be a writer and has set out to prove it. For the past decade, Barry has run a highly popular writing workshop for nonwriters called Writing the Unthinkable, which was featured in The New York Times Magazine. Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor is the first book to make her innovative lesson plans and writing exercises available to the public for home or classroom use. Barry teaches a method of writing that focuses on the relationship between the hand, the brain, and spontaneous images, both written and visual. It has been embraced by people across North America—prison inmates, postal workers, university students, high-school teachers, and hairdressers—for opening pathways to creativity.Syllabus's takes the course plan for Barry’s workshop and runs wild with it in her densely detailed signature style. Collaged texts, ballpoint-pen doodles, and watercolor washes adorn Syllabus’s yellow lined pages, which offer advice on finding a creative voice and using memories to inspire the writing process. Throughout it all, Barry’s voice (as an author and as a teacher-mentor) rings clear, inspiring, and honest.