Richard Renaldi
Despite being packed cheek-to-jowel in many cities, most Westerns have a strong aversion to being touched by strangers. Renaldi’s book captures numerous “couples” touching one another. All are strangers, having met just a moment before. The facial expressions and body language vary differently in every one. Some images …
David Bayles & Ted Orland
This is the book that should be given to every freshman art major, to anyone who wants to start making art but can’t seem to get started and to every artist who is stuck. While it may seem deceptively short, the content packs a wallop. …
Jacek Yerka
Jacek Yerka’s fantastic, surrealistic paintings are primarily inspired by his youth in communist-era Poland. The sooty cities, medieval walled towns and cathedrals of his childhood are combined into subterranean views, forests and floating in trees. The works are intricate, detailed and with the lovely colors of the old …
Edited Michael Maharam
Long-time industrial designer Irving Harper now works on his personal paper-folding projects. His works are a combination of traditional origami and sculpture in other, more traditional mediums. Detailed, textured and visually striking.…
Tim Walker
Tim Walker is a fashion photographer in the loose sense that there are people wearing expensive clothing in many of his photos. However, the clothing themselves are probably the last thing your eye will fix on. Walker uses enormous props, decaying mansions and the bizarre, disproportionate bodies of …
Carl Warner
Food Landscapes is as it sounds – lovely, Disney-esque scenes created entirely out of food. There are rivers of meat, skies if salmon, cheesy rocks and broccoli trees. Every minute detail is fantastic and brilliantly positioned. After the first eye-popping scan of the book, do go back and …
Bernhard Edmaier
Edmaier’s aerial photos of volcanoes, both active and dormant, around the world are works of art. Some are so alien, so intensely colored and strangely shaped, that they can’t be of this planet. Some are brooding dead hunks of rock, other fiery pits and still others glowing pools …
Phaidon
This beautiful overview of historical and influential home styles is perfect for the architectural dilettante. Each pages features a large photo with a short paragraph on the chosen house, architect and influences. Most are highly liveable styles – though are a few houses, like one by Buckminster Fuller – …
Photos by Alan Weintraub | Text by Alan Hess
At least for me, Niemeyer’s houses vacillate between stunningly beautiful and almost repugnantly spare, even Stalinish, in design. Many of his houses, built primarily in Brazil now have the feel of “has-been modernism.” They were the stuff of the future sixty …
Lloyd Kahn
“Joyful” is the best word I can use to describe Kahn’s new collection of tiny homes. Each under 500 square feet is a gem. Many are handbuilt and lived in by the builders. Others are from built by companies specializing in downsizing for the 21st century. The book …
Hugh MacLeod
Macleod has done a marvelous job of distilling the basics of being successful at being creative. This is not the same this being monetarily successful at being creative. Like The Happiness Project, Ignore Everybody makes you take a good long look at your perceptions and how outside …
Lark Books
Most people hearing the words “seed beads” probably think of Native American clothing and hippie bracelets. The master beadweavers in this book go far beyond the traditional decorations. From modern covered vases, kimonos, sculptures , plants, flowers and sea creatures these pieces of art are fantastically detailed and …
This immense collection of French photographer Robert Doisneau spans decades of his life. From the pre-WWII years of cafés, the opening of the Eiffel tower, Folies Bergére to the French Resistance during the war years and on into the 70s, these marvelous pictures show Paris in all its glory. The …
David MacCandless
MacCandless’ book is an example of graphic design at its finest – a perfect combination of attractive art and a clear message. From the serious (carbon footprints) to the frivolous (dictators mustaches) creative graphic design makes the data beautiful and useful.
Slinkachu
Artist Slinkachu sets up teeny-tiny dioramas of teeny-tiny people doing naughty things throughout London. Using the surrounding “big people world” his minute people interact with their sets as though their size is perfectly normal. Amazing and devious.
Christopher Marley
On our honeymoon last year we stopped by the gallery in Prairie Edge Art Gallerie in South Dakota. A few of Marley’s insect pieces were on display and we were fascinated. Each piece is a small collection of real, exotic insects. Pheromone shows many of his pieces, along …
