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Tag: Art

Chronicle Book Craft Catalogue

by Dan
Craft / August 12, 2010

You know that all our new and recent catalogues are available to download online, right? Of course you did. 

Well, I just wanted to let you know that the Chronicle Books Craft catalogue for Fall 2010—with new books from Amy Butler and Lotta Jansdotter—is now available to download (PDF) at your leisure. Happy crafting! 

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Dan Eldon Project

by Dan
Art & Photography + Travel / August 09, 2010

Photojournalist Dan Eldon was only 22 when he lost his life on assignment in Somalia. 

An artist, an activist, and an adventurer, Eldon had led a relief mission across Africa, worked as a graphic designer in New York, studied (intermittently) at four colleges, travelled through Europe, Africa, Japan, and the United States, founded a charity for Mozambiquan refugees, directed a film, written a book and started up his own photography business all before his tragic death.  

The creative journals he left behind became the basis for the bestselling The Journey Is the Destination published by Chronicle Books, and his life inspired the founding of Creative Visions, which supports “Creative Activists” who use media and the arts to create positive change in the world.

The foundation have recently redesigned daneldon.org, their website dedicated to Eldon, and have launched The Dan Eldon Project, a collection of clothing inspired by Eldon's life to support their work. 

You can read more about Eldon's life and legacy Dan Eldon: The Art of Life.

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Art of McSweeney’s Video

by Dan
Design & Typography / June 24, 2010

A novel with each cover hand-illustrated by the author... Literary journals bound by magnets, or designed to look like junk mail... The sharp wit, gorgeous design, and playful "why not?" invention of independent literary publisher McSweeney's have earned it a large and loyal following and made its journals, books, The Believer magazine, and Wholphin DVD's collectible favorites of readers and graphic designers alike.

Created by the McSweeney's staff to commemorate their 11th (or 12th) anniversary, The Art of McSweeney's showcases all their award-winning art and design. It features 100's of images, interviews with collaborators such as Chris Ware and Michael Chabon, and dozens of insights into McSweeney's quirky creative process and the visual experience of reading:

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Creases and Razor Blades

by Dan
Graphica / June 23, 2010

Illustrator Nick Marinkovich talks about his process and working on KENK: A Graphic Portrait in this great behind-the-scenes interview:

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James Jean’s RIFT ~ YouTube Video

by Danielle
Art & Photography + Craft / June 21, 2010

Almost a decade into his astounding career, James Jean has emerged as one of contemporary art's most important voices. From sell-out gallery shows in New York City and crowded signings at Comic-Con to kudos from the fashion world for his work for Prada, Jean's richly detailed art has struck a chord with fans across the globe.

RIFT (due in stores August) showcases a brand-new collection of art in an elegant accordion-book format. Inside, two haunting landscapes span the connected pages—folded in a variety of ways, the pages reveal myriad images hidden within the larger paintings.

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Obsessive Consumption at Swissmiss

by Dan
Art & Photography + Design & Typography / March 29, 2010

And just to follow up from Siobhan's post about Kate Bingaman-Burt,  her awesome new book Obsessive Consumption was reviewed at one of our favourite design blogs swissmiss today:

I was given the book called Obsessive Consumption by Kate Bingaman-Burt and while I enjoyed the illustrations, I didn’t really know what to make of it at first. Cute, I thought, but what’s the point of drawing pretty much everything one buys? I started reading the intro and all of a sudden the book took another another meaning... G and I started talking about how we were raised when it comes to shopping. We were saying how glad we are that we are not ’shoppers’. After a few minutes we looked at each other and said: “Wait a second, we ARE shoppers, we shop ONLINE. We just don’t go into stores!” Oops!
 

Obsessive Consumption is definitely that kind of book — it sneaks up on you and then you find yourself wondering whether you do REALLY need all that stuff you just bought...

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Bee by Rose-Lynn Fisher

by Dan
Animals & Nature + Art & Photography / March 22, 2010

Bee by photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher presents 60 astonishing photographs of honeybee anatomy in magnifications ranging from 10x to 5000x.

As you can see from this video, Fisher's photographs — rendered in stunning detail — are almost otherworldly:

 

Bee
by Rose-Lynn Fisher
ISBN 978-1-56898-944-0
Princeton Architectural Press
Hardcover
Price: $35.95

AVAILABLE APRIL 2010

 

 

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Calligraffiti

by Dan
Art & Photography / March 17, 2010

If, like me, you're interested in graffiti, street art, hand-drawn lettering and calligraphy, then you might well get a kick out of this video of Niels Shoe Meulman preparing his Calligraffiti show in Amsterdam. The video was directed by Marco Grambia & Sven Super with music by Musicmusic:

Here are some books on street art available from Raincoast that you might be interested in:

Guerilla Art

Sebastian Peiter and Goetz Werner

Guerilla Art features interviews with graffiti-inspired street art pioneers Futura Ramm:ell:zee and Blek le Rat in which they discuss their own work, how street art was born out of the days of subway train graffiti spraypainting and tagging and how the new movement of street artists are doing things differently.

Rackgaki

Ryo Sanada and Suridh Hassan

Rackgaki covers the graffiti scene in Japan and showcases the creativity within this new and relatively unexplored form of contemporary Japanese art and illustrates the work of the major artists or writers working in Japan today.

 

 

Stickerbomb and Stickerbomb 2

Studio Rarekwai

Stickers are an essential part of the street art movement. Inexpensive and easy to produce, they act as a kind of informal business card for some graffiti writers, and a quick and effective promotional tool for many artists and illustrators.

The Stickerbomb books are collectable, fully-peelable sticker books featuring illustration, graffiti, and graphics. Both are filled with amazing collections of over 250 specially commissioned stickers by artists, illustrators, and graffiti writers from around the world.

 

 

Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists

Tristan Manco

From the leading authority on the graffiti and street art scenes, Street Sketchbook provides an exclusive look at the private sketchbooks of 65 international street artists, including Canadian artists TurfOne (Montreal), Royal (Ottawa), Luke Ramsey (Victoria) and Labrona (Ottawa).

 

Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition

Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant

The 25th Anniversary Edition of the seminal Subway Art is a large-scale, deluxe format hardcover, with 70 additional photographs and a fresh introduction and afterword. A book for collectors and the curious, it illustrates the passion, creativity, and resourcefulness of unlikely kids inventing an art form destined to spread worldwide and spawn the present-day street art movement.

(Calligraffiti video via Thinking Type on Twitter)

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Cartographies of Time

by Dan
Art & Photography + Design & Typography / March 16, 2010

How do you draw time? What does history look like?

Cartographies of Time by Anthony Grafton and Daniel Rosenberg is a fascinating history of visual representations of time in Europe and the United States from 1450 to the present. Beautifully illustrated, the book features a wide variety of timelines and maps from medieval manuscripts and contemporary websites.

Here are a few of the incredible images from the book:

There is a short review of Cartographies of Time at Book Forum.

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Illustrator S.britt Interviewed at Grain Edit

by Dan
Art & Photography + Kids / February 16, 2010

Eccentric illustrator S.britt, who has done lots of wonderful work for our friends at Chronicle Books—including the illustrations for the spooky Over in the Hollow—was recently interviewed by the wonderful GrainEdit (but don't expect any straight answers!):

Well, after many years of struggling with remedial reading and basic comprehension, I was finally able to complete my very first children’s book during last Thursday evening’s bedtime story jamboree and prayerfest. I think the book was entitled Go, Dog Go! but don’t quote me on that since I can’t seem to remember anything past the part where the dog goes. However I am very excited about starting my next children’s book, Atlas Shrugged. Really, I like any book about choo-choo trains... As far as the process goes, it’s really no big secret. I just visit the local library or bookstore, select a tome that piques my interest, and pitch a powerful choking fit until someone eventually agrees to read to me. And if that doesn’t work, I threaten to wet myself and anything else within a five foot radius.

Over in the Hollow
by Rebecca Dickinson
illustrated by S.britt
Chronicle Books
ISBN 978-0-8118-5035-3
$18.95 hardcover

Also Available:
School Years: A Family Keepsake Of School Memories

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