Daring Adventures in Paint: Find Your Flow, Trust Your Path, and Discover Your Authentic Voice-Techniques for Painting, Sketching, and Mixed Media


Mati Rose McDonough - 2012
    Written by the well-loved artist/illustrator/blogger Mati Rose McDonough, this book's approach to making art is a bit like uncovering a hidden treasure, a treasure that resides within each aspiring artist. Through a myriad of both practical applications and creative exercises, Mati shows artists how to "find their magic"—the place of confidence from which they can access the vision of what they want to share with the world.

Thinking Architecture


Peter Zumthor - 1998
    In these essays Peter Zumthor expresses his motivation in designing buildings, which speak to our emotions and understanding in so many ways, and possess a powerful and unmistakable presence and personality. This book, whose first edition has been out of print for years, has been expanded to include three new essays: "Does Beauty Have a Form?," "The Magic of the Real," and "Light in the Landscape." It has been freshly illustrated throughout with new color photographs of Zumthor's new home and studio in Haldenstein, taken specially for this edition by Laura Padgett, and received a new typography by Hannele Gronlund.

Graphic Design: A User's Manual


Adrian Shaughnessy - 2009
    Set out in A-Z style and written in a realistic, conversational, and insightful way, the book provides advice on the fundamental topics and issues that face designers in their daily lives. It looks at everything from kerning to presenting, from budgeting to dealing with rejection, from annual reports to interface design. Adrian Shaughnessy, author of the best-selling How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul, is himself a successful designer, and brings a wealth of experience to this very useful and entertaining book.

The Empress of Art: Catherine the Great and the Transformation of Russia


Susan Jaques - 2015
    A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and she being crowned the Empress of Russia.Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed "glutton for art" and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art.

Brian Eno's Another Green World (33 1/3 Book 67)


Geeta Dayal - 2009
    It was the first Brian Eno album tobe composed almost completely in the confines of a recording studio,over a scant few months in the summer of 1975. The album was a proofof concept for Eno's budding ideas of "the studio as musicalinstrument," and a signpost for a bold new way of thinking aboutmusic.In this book, Geeta Dayal unravels Another Green World's abundantmysteries, venturing into its dense thickets of sound. How was analbum this cohesive and refined formed in such a seemingly ad hoc way?How were electronics and layers of synthetic treatments used to createan album so redolent of the natural world? How did a deck of cardsfigure into all of this? Here, through interviews and archivalresearch, she unearths the strange story of how Another Green Worldformed the link to Eno's future -- foreshadowing his metamorphosisfrom unlikely glam rocker to sonic painter and producer.

Yaarukkum Vetkamillai (Nobody is Ashamed)


Cho Ramaswamy
    

Criterion Designs


The Criterion Collection - 2014
    This volume gathers highlights from designs commissioned by the Criterion Collection, featuring covers, supplemental art, and never-before-seen sketches and concept art plus a gallery of every Criterion cover since the collection’s first laserdisc in 1984. From avant-garde experiments to big-budget blockbusters, cult favorites to the towering classics of world cinema, the depth and breadth of what film can be is on display in these striking images. Whether painstakingly faithful re-creations or bold re-imaginings, the stunningly diverse designs collected here offer new ways for cinephiles and design aficionados alike to engage with the world’s greatest filmmakers.

The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses


Juhani Pallasmaa - 1996
    This new, revised and extended edition of this seminal work will not only inspire architects and students to design more holistic architecture, but will enrich the general reader's perception of the world around them. The Eyes of the Skin has become a classic of architectural theory and consists of two extended essays. The first surveys the historical development of the ocular-centric paradigm in western culture since the Greeks, and its impact on the experience of the world and the nature of architecture. The second examines the role of the other senses in authentic architectural experiences, and points the way towards a multi-sensory architecture which facilitates a sense of belonging and integration.

Tiny House Design & Construction Guide


Dan Louche - 2012
    By reading the guide you'll understand the steps that will need to be taken and know where and how to start building your own tiny house.

Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi


Hayden Herrera - 2015
    From interlocking wooden sculptures to massive steel monuments to the elegant Akari lamps, Noguchi became a master of what he called the "sculpturing of space." But his constant struggle-as both an artist and a man-was to embrace his conflicted identity as the son of a single American woman and a famous yet reclusive Japanese father. "It's only in art," he insisted, "that it was ever possible for me to find any identity at all."In this remarkable biography of the elusive artist, Hayden Herrera observes this driving force of Noguchi's creativity as intimately tied to his deep appreciation of nature. As a boy in Japan, Noguchi would collect wild azaleas and blue mountain flowers for a little garden in front of his home. As Herrera writes, he also included a rock, "to give a feeling of weight and permanence." It was a sensual appreciation he never abandoned. When looking for stones in remote Japanese quarries for his zen-like Paris garden forty years later, he would spend hours actually listening to the stones, scrambling from one to another until he found one that "spoke to him." Constantly striving to "take the essence of nature and distill it," Noguchi moved from sculpture to furniture, and from playgrounds to sets for his friend the choreographer Martha Graham, and back again working in wood, iron, clay, steel, aluminum, and, of course, stone.Noguchi traveled constantly, from New York to Paris to India to Japan, forever uprooting himself to reinvigorate what he called the "keen edge of originality." Wherever he went, his needy disposition and boyish charm drew women to him, yet he tended to push them away when things began to feel too settled. Only through his art-now seen as a powerful aesthetic link between the East and the West-did Noguchi ever seem to feel that he belonged.Combining Noguchi's personal correspondence and interviews with those closest to him-from artists, patrons, assistants, and lovers-Herrera has created an authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most important sculptors. She locates Noguchi in his friendships with such artists as Buckminster Fuller and Arshile Gorky, and in his affairs with women including Frida Kahlo and Anna Matta Clark. With the attention to detail and scholarship that made her biography of Gorky a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Herrera has written a rich meditation on art in a globalized milieu. Listening to Stone is a moving portrait of an artist compulsively driven to reinvent himself as he searched for his own "essence of sculpture."

Country Living Salvage Style: Decorate with Vintage Finds


Leslie Linsley - 2017
    By reclaiming honest materials and collectibles, large and small, all imbued with their own history, you can infuse your home with warmth, charm, and individuality. Let the experts at Country Living show you how to find and make the most of discarded treasures, such as old windows, barn doors, metal military desks, mailroom filing cabinets, factory lamps, and hand-forged iron hooks. Plus, the editors share best practices for bargain hunting and obtaining the most desirable cast-offs, such as antique beams and weathered barn wood. Stunning photos of every room, along with imaginative ideas from homeowners, will spark your creativity and give you an eye-opening perspective on the decorative potential of “trash.”