3 comments about Chainsaw Carving: The Art & Craft.

1. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to get started with chainsaw carving! Step by step instructions on several projects and loads of information on chainsaws, sprockets and bars to help you pick the right equipment for the job, technical information etc..
   It is one of the best Chainsaw Carving books on the market at this time!



2. Disregard the comments "until now there has been very little, if any, how-to information for beginners" or "Excellent resource for the beginner" noted in other reviews. They are WRONG! I am a beginner, and after reading this book cover to cover I don't think I am anything more than the same beginner I was when I started. Here's the breakdown of the book:

   140 pages total. 60 pages are just color pictures of what I would classify as very advanced carvings and no info or details on how they were made. 28 pages are chainsaw facts, including 9 pages of color chainsaw pictures (no comments or advice on one model vs another, just lots of pictures of chainsaws...big deal). in the remaining 47 pages dedicated to "carving", there are only four actual projects. Of these four, just two have multiple pictures and step-by-step instructions.

   For a beginner who is looking to learn this beautiful art, I estimate there about 30 pages of actual content you are interested in. Save your money and look for something else! That's exactly what I'm going to do right after I post this review.




3. Excellent resource for the beginner, step by step photos take you thru the entire project. Excellent section on tools. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to get into chainsaw carving. Cant wait for his next book

No comments about Public Sculpture in New Jersey: Monuments to Collective Identiy.

5 comments about The Dinner Party.

1. The book is about one of the most well-known peices in Feminist art, Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party". It not only features photos and accounts of Chicago and her hard-working team of volenteers (both men and women) as they worked for almost eight years on the project and fought to have it exhibited, but it also features detailed sections on each of the place settings and kind of symbolism used in them, and biographies of all the other women whose names around them. A very interesting and exciting book to flip through.



2. Even though I have rated this book, I have never read it. Why? Well its for the simple fact that I can't find it anywhere. I know that it is out of print but I need it for a class and also for the fact that I want it . Iv heard so many interesting things about The dinner Party. I hope to share this not just with my classmates but with my mom and in the far, far future when I decide to have kids, I would like to share it with my little girl. so hopefuly whom ever reads my review (so to speak) it will be listened to and the people who need the book will have it as well and the people who want it.



3. A triumph! A long-awaited celebration of truth about all womankind! A must-have for all women. and for men who truly appreciate their worth! Every female in the world should read this book cover-to cover and rejoice. A rare and beautiful work of art--second only to The Dinner Party exhibit itself. I am going to give this book to my daughter, friends of varying ethnic backgrounds, and several lesbian friends. How often do you find a book that speaks to the entire human race about the valuable contributions of the so-called "weaker sex"? Now we must all work to get The Dinner Party exhibit traveling, as it was originally intended to do, so that we can all personally stand in awe at this altar to all Eve's daughters!



4. What could be more thrilling than a genius like Judy Chicago as she challenges assumptions and traditions with her own brilliant and harrowingly moving depiction of Womyn's struggles. Truly enthralling, and, as another reviewer noted, a threat to the white male agendas of patriarchy. Give this book to all your friends!



5. "Dinner Party" is one of the all-time great works of feminist art, and although it proved too threatening to males, especially the white males of congress, it is art which MUST be witnessed by all young women. I applaud the other reviewers who have distributed this great book to other women.

3 comments about Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction.

1. Saw Ms. Oka Doner on a TV spot and googled her book to buy immediately.



2. This book gives a thrilling sense of Michele Oka Doner's life and work, starting with her exposure to marine and plant life as a child in Miami, and details how this seminal experience continues to guide her artistic production. Gorgeous color illustrations complement scholarly essays lending insight into her encyclopedic imagination, her vast repertoire of sources, and her personal lexicon of images and text. Of particular interest is Suzanne Ramjlak's use of the marriage between Vulcan and Venus image to describe the union of opposites so prevalent in Oka Doner's oeuvre. Tracing her career of four decades, Natural Seduction explores the artist's exquisite craftsmanship, her ideas of beauty, pleasure, and grace, and her ties to nature and mythology as they apply to her functional art, her sculptures and installations, and her public commissions.



3. Enhanced with informed and informative essays by Morris Lapidus, Suzanne Ramljak, and Arthur C. Danto highlighting the central themes of the art, Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction is a full-color photographic showcase of the work of internationally acclaimed artist and designer Michele Oka Doner. Grand architectural projects, clay sculpture, drawings, cast silver, and many other types of media offer a broad spectrum of her artistic inspiration; including works celebrate the human figure, natural elements, and sweeping lines which are a recurring theme. Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction is an important and very welcome contribution to personal, professional, and academic 20th Century Art History/Art Appreciation collections.

2 comments about Mimbres Pottery: Ancient Art of the American Southwest.

1. This is classic Mibres at its best. If you don't have this one in your library - WHY NOT?!



2. This book is hard to find in libraries but is an excellent resource. Excellent photographs of bowls and clear description of styles and meaning makes the book invaluable. We use it in our class.

1 comments about Paper Mache: Over 20 Creative Projects for the Home (The Inspirations Series).

1. Paper mache is *not* just covering a balloon with newspaper! I never dreamed of all the things you can do with it. This is a great book with projects that are inspiring, beautiful, and useful. This is a great craft because it's probably about the cheapest arty thing you can do - basically just cardboard and newspaper. I HIGHLY recommend this book!

No comments about Furniture Mouldings: Full Size Sections of Moulded Details on English Furniture from 1574 to 1820.

5 comments about Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (California Studies in the History of Art Discovery Series).

1. Therese Lichtenstein, Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (University of California Press, 2003)
   
   If you are aware of Hans Bellmer, you probably don't need this review. If you are not aware of Hans Bellmer, you're probably not reading this review. So... fish!A blowdryer. Seven kinds of candy and a needle threaded with bullion stitching together tree limbs in the desert.
   
   Lichtenstein does a fine job of deconstructing Bellmer, not only focusing on his subversion of Nazi ideology (ground already well-trod in art criticism), but pulling in biographical data to give a clearer understanding of what forces drove Bellmer to create life-sized dolls, assemble the pieces in odd ways, and then photograph them hundreds of times with only the smallest changes in position. Her essay is clear, readable, excellent. The book's main problem is that, well, for an art book, there's not terribly much art. More pictures, please! (Especially the drawings, a side of Bellmer's art seen all too rarely.) What art there is is reproduced well, though that's to be expected from an art book, wot? The book also uses the annoying, but increasingly common, convention of end-of-the-book endnotes instead of footnotes (or even end-of-the-chapter notes, annoying but not as much so). Stopping every half-page or so to flip to the back of the book makes for not-so-happy readers.
   
   Still, a fine work on a sadly neglected artist. Worth your time. ****



2. Therese Lichtenstein's "Behind Closed Doors" will immediately grab you visually, as any book about art or an artist should. It rivals Sue Taylor's "Anatomy of Anxiety" as far as visual appeal with the book itself and the plates therein. However, Lichtenstein's discussion of the exceedingly complex Hans Bellmer is a little too cautious, a little too much of a large brushstroke. This is a great book for a reader who knows little about Bellmer's work to read, but if you are hoping for some biography with your art discussion, this one does not have very much.

   This book is significant, though. Lichtenstein's discussion of Bellmer's life and art within an historical context is an engrossing and very well-documented discussion, but since so much of the book is spent on such interpretation, I feel it has left a lot of Hans, the man, and where his dolls really came from, by the wayside.

   This is merely opinion, and it may be that what was needed (and I guess I can accept this) was a new look at Bellmer and his work, with a little less focus on castration anxiety, his relationship with his father, his brother, and his lack of ability to truly be a child when he was a child. But I fear it was never really investigated b/c of the inherent taboo nature of Bellmer the man. It may have been me, but it always kind of felt like Lichtenstein was holding back a little, a tone of tension, perhaps, a touch of apprehension.

   What I feel is absolutely wonderful in Lichtenstein's book: its absolutely gorgeous creation, and the inclusion of a couple of Bellmer's own writing.

   As I said, for a reader just beginning to delve into the surreal world of Hans Bellmer, it is perfection. For those who already know a good deal about Bellmer, it is still very much worth it for the beautiful construction of the book, the excellent plates of his work, his own writing that is also contained, as well as Lichtenstein's solid, though sometimes redundant, interpretations of Hans Bellmer's work.




3. This is a good book to dicover the strange world of Hans Bellmer. Therese Lichtenstein describes the history of the dolls and Hans Bellmer with the contribution of people that were close to Bellmer. She also try to give a sociologic, anthropologic and psychoanalitic explanation to Bellmer's work. I think it's a good book to buy!



4. For me, this book was more than a mere companion to the exhibition, which I was fortunate enough to see. It caused me to reconsider my uncritical reluctance to take Bellmer seriously.



5. Too many words. Not enough photoes as an art book.

1 comments about Bears to Carve With Dale Power (A Schiffer Book for Woodcarvers).

1. I got the book to gain access to some of the features to the polar bear and grizzly. More on the polar bear than the grizzly but still helpful to me and one of my carving projects.

1 comments about Quick & Easy Origami.

1. So many origami books claim to be easy. This book really IS fun and easy. I teach art to grades one through five so I need the directions to be simple and few, clear and uncomplicated. This book is just that. I even taught my seven year old daughter to do most of them. Now she loves origami. If you are just starting out or are directionally challenged like I am, then this is the book for you.