Wall and Piece


Banksy - 2005
    Not only did he smuggle his pieces into four of New York City's major art museums, he's also "hung" his work at London's Tate Gallery and adorned Israel's West Bank barrier with satirical images. Banksy's identity remains unknown, but his work is unmistakable with prints selling for as much as $45,000.

Be in a Treehouse: Design / Construction / Inspiration


Pete Nelson - 2014
    To that end, he shares the basics of treehouse construction with his own recent projects as case studies. Using photographs taken especially for this project along with diagrams, he covers the selection and care of trees, and explains the fundamentals of building treehouse platforms. To ignite the imagination, Nelson presents 27 treehouses in the United States, Europe, and Africa. The book will be indispensible to anyone who aspires to have a treehouse, from the armchair dreamer, to the amateur builder, to the professional contractor.

Color Theory: An essential guide to color--from basic principles to practical applications


Patti Mollica - 2013
     Regardless of your medium, a solid understanding of color and its applications is essential. Petite in size but packed with information, this fresh, contemporary take on the subject of color features step-by-step projects and practical tips and techniques to put color knowledge to effective use. From pigment characteristics and color mixing to color psychology, you’ll find all the insight you need to make dynamic, harmonious, and meaningful color choices in your own works of art. You’ll find within: discussions and illustrations of the complexities of color and how to use it as a tool for communication; tips for creating vibrant mixes, lively blacks, realistic greens, and flesh tones; and an inspiring collection of fresh and contemporary artwork.Begin with an overview of color in the history of art and the science behind color.Then learn color basics: the color wheel; hue, saturation, and value; color and value; color temperature; color relativity; and color schemes.Everything you need to know about pigments and paints is detailed next.With these essentials covered, move on to integrate color with your compositions and painting style as a means of expression.Harness the power of color in your painting with Color Theory!

A-Z Great Modern Artists


Andy Tuohy - 2015
    Andy Tuohy is a graphic designer and worked in advertising for many years before becoming a freelance artist/ designer. He has had design work commissioned by the Tate Modern and Tate Liverpool, Turner Contemporary and Henley Regatta, and has been featured in Design Week amongst other publications.

Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design


Chip Kidd - 2013
    Go, is an introduction to the ways in which a designer communicates his or her ideas to the world. It's written and designed just for those curious kids, not to mention their savvy parents, who want to learn the secret of how to make things dynamic and interesting.

2 Weeks to a Younger Brain


Gary Small - 2015
    Now they can stop worrying, take charge of their brain health, and begin enjoying a sharper mind quickly and for years to come. In 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain, Dr. Gary Small and Gigi Vorgan translate the latest brain science into practical strategies and exercises that everyone can use to get immediate and long-lasting benefits. Dr. Small's studies have found that the sooner each of us gets started on a younger brain program, the greater the potential benefits. Following the authors' advice will not only improve your memory, but will also strengthen your physical health by reducing your risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. In a new study published by the journal Psychological Science, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital reported that the ability to reason, learn, and remember information ebbs and flows over our lifespan Although some forms of rapid recall peak in our late teens, our ability to evaluate another person's emotions by just viewing their eyes is strongest in midlife. And, vocabulary skills may not decline until well into our 60s. Remarkably, their data showed that since the late-1970s and early 1980s, our peak-ability to define words has gradually increased from age 40 to age 60. After three decades of helping thousands of patients improve their mental acuity, Dr. Small has shown that our daily lifestyle habits are directly linked to brain health. 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain reveals how you can rapidly form new habits that bolster cognitive abilities and help prevent, and reverse, brain aging. 2 Weeks to a Younger Brain makes sense of the latest scientific discoveries showing that: • Brain aging starts as young as age 20 • Sex is good for your brain • Memory exercises can erase senior moments from your brain scan • Aerobic conditioning can overcome even a genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease

Landscape and Memory


Simon Schama - 1995
    He tells of the Nazi cult of the primeval German forest; the play of Christian and pagan myth in Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers; and the duel between a monumental sculptor and a feminist gadfly on the slopes of Mount Rushmore. The result is a triumphant work of history, naturalism, mythology, and art. "A work of great ambition and enormous intellectual scope...consistently provocative and revealing."--New York Times"Extraordinary...a summary cannot convey the riches of this book. It will absorb, instruct, and fascinate."--New York Review of Books

Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty


Phoebe Hoban - 2010
    She was born into a proper Victorian family, and came of age during suffrage. The quintessential Bohemian, she spent more than half a century, from her early days as a WPA artist living in the heart of the Village, through her Whitney retrospective in 1974, until her death ten years later, painting, often in near-obscurity, an extraordinarily diverse population—from young black sisters in Harlem to the elderly Jewish twin artists, Raphael and Moses Soyer, to Meyer Schapiro and Linus Pauling, to the American Communist Party chairman Gus Hall—creating an indelible portrait of 20th century America.Neel's hundreds of portraits portray a universe of powerful personalities and document an age. Neel painted through the Depression, McCarthyism, the Civil Rights Movement, the sexual revolution of the 60's, feminism, and the feverish eighties. Fiercely democratic in her subjects, she portrayed her lovers, her children, her neighbors in Spanish Harlem, pregnant nudes, crazy people, and famous figures in the art world, all in a searing, psychological style uniquely her own. From Village legend Joe Gould with multiple penises to Frank O'Hara as a lyrical young poet, from porn star Annie Sprinkle gussied up in leather, to her own anxious, nude pregnant daughter-in-law, Neel's portraits are as arrestingly executed as they are relentlessly honest.In this first full-length biography of Neel, best-selling author Phoebe Hoban recounts the remarkable story of Neel's life and career, as full of Sturm and Drang as the century she powerfully captured in paint. Neel managed to transcend her often tragic circumstances, surviving the death from diphtheria of her infant daughter Santillana, her first child by the renowned Cuban painter Carlos Enriquez, with whom she lived in Havana for a year before returning to America; the break-up of her marriage; a nervous breakdown at thirty resulting in several suicide attempts for which she was institutionalized; and the terrible separation from her second child, Isabetta, whom Carlos took back to Havana.In every aspect of her life, Neel dictated her own terms—from defiantly painting figurative pieces at the height of Abstract Expressionism, convincing her subjects to disrobe (which many of them did, including, surprisingly, Andy Warhol) to becoming a single mother to the two sons she bore to dramatically different partners. No wonder she became the de facto artist of the Feminist movement. (When Time magazine put Kate Millet on its cover in 1970, she was asked to paint the portrait.) Very much in touch with her time, Neel was also always ahead of it. Although she herself would probably have rejected such label, she was America's first feminist, multicultural artist, a populist painter for the ages.Phoebe Hoban's Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty tells the unforgettable story of a woman who forged a permanent place in the pantheon by courageously flaunting convention, both in her life and her work.

Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day


Clemency Burton-Hill - 2017
    Thoughtfully curated and expertly researched, this is a book of classical music to keep you company: whoever you are, wherever you're from.'The only requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open mind.' Clemency Burton-HillPlaylists are available on most streaming music platforms including Apple Music.

How to


Michael Bierut - 2015
    Featuring more than thirty-five of his projects, it reveals his philosophy of graphic design—how to use it to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world. Specially chosen to illustrate the breadth and reach of graphic design today, each entry demonstrates Bierut’s eclectic approach. In his entertaining voice, the artist walks us through each from start to finish, mixing historic images, preliminary drawings (including full-size reproductions of the notebooks he has maintained for more than thirty-five years), working models and rejected alternatives, as well as the finished work. Throughout, he provides insights into the creative process, his working life, his relationship with clients, and the struggles that any design professional faces in bringing innovative ideas to the world.Offering insight and inspiration for artists, designers, students, and anyone interested in how words, images, and ideas can be put together, How to provides insight to the design process of one of this century’s most renowned creative minds.

Live Learn: Expressive Drawing: A Practical Guide to Freeing the Artist Within


Steven Aimone - 2009
    Written by arts educator Steven Aimone, it’s packed with solid, friendly, hands-on instruction, as well as inspiring images, and backed by the trusted AARP name. Aimone teaches an accessible style called expressive drawing that emphasizes line and mark, rather than rendering a specific object, which for many people, can create barriers to self-expression. Exercises start off simple and quick, encouraging readers to work on instinct and feeling, while the later ones focus on detail and refinement. The book features hundreds ofimages of work by well-known artists from Debuffet to Jim Dine—and each chapter includes a profile of someone who came to drawing late in life and achieved recognition.

The Creative Photographer


Catherine Anderson - 2011
    For Catherine Anderson, it's just the beginning. In a wide array of projects using techniques from Photoshop to needle and thread, she shows beginner and experienced photographers alike how to turn their pictures into handmade objects of art-from books and collages to customized greeting cards.

Gig Posters Volume I: Rock Show Art of the 21st Century


Clay Hayes - 2009
    With the rising popularity of MP3 files and streaming digital music--and the near-extinction of traditional album art--concert posters have become the most important visual representation of contemporary music.Gig Posters Volume I celebrates this dynamic medium with contributions from 101 top designers--including Rob Jones of Animal Rummy, Steve Walters, Jay Ryan, Gary Houston, Aesthetic Apparatus, Patent Pending Industries, and many more. Throughout the book, their voices offer fascinating commentary and behind-the-scenes information about the creation of gig posters.Readers will also discover 101 perforated and ready-to-frame posters promoting today's most innovative and original bands--including Radiohead, the White Stripes, Modest Mouse, Girl Talk, Queens of the Stone Age, Wilco, and many, many more.Complete with an introduction by founder and curator Clay Hayes, Gig Posters Volume I celebrates the most talented designers, artists, bands, and performers of the twenty-first century.

Professional Photoshop: The Classic Guide to Color Correction


Dan Margulis - 2002
    This new edition, the first in nearly five years, is completely updated for the age of digital photography. It continues the book’s tradition of introducing astoundingly effective, previously unknown methods of image enhancement. The original photographs found in the book come from a variety of professional sources, and all correction exercises are on the included CD. Professional Photoshop has changed radically from edition to edition, and this time is no exception--with almost 90 percent new content and completely overhauled coverage of curves, channel blending, and sharpening.Professional Photoshop offers a full explanation of: How curves bring out detail in the most important areas of the imagen A comprehensive strategy for blending channels to create deeper, stronger images The strengths and weaknesses of CMYK, LAB, and RGB, and when to use each one The first detailed look at the Shadow/Highlight command--and even more sophis-ticated ways to enhance contrast in the lightest and darkest parts of the imagen Sharpening strategies, in three full chapters, including the innovative hiraloam method (High Radius, Low Amount). Plus, a fiendishly effective method of merging hiraloam and conventional unsharp masking The realities--and the politics--of preparing files for commercial offset printing and how to deal with colors that are out of the press’s gamut What Camera Raw and similar acquisition modules can offer Typical problems of digital captures that were not found in the age of film--and how to correct for them

Five Hundred Years of Printing


S.H. Steinberg - 1955
    The most famous introduction to the history of printing ever published.