Book Description
"From Gordon Matta-Clark to Lawrence Weiner, Bruce Nauman to Alison Knowles, the question of site locates itself in issues of public space, at the intersection of the imagined and the real, at the juncture of performance and architectural production. By anthologizing essays, documents, and interviews by leading critics, historians, and artists on issues of site-specificity, conceptualism, feminism, and architecture practice, Surface Tension reveals the connections between cultural production and the very spaces in which such work functions. These textual explorations are complemented by extensive documentation of related projects, both historical and contemporary, by artists, architects, and performance artists, including Coughing Piece, a never-before released 1961 audio work by Yoko Ono; an obscure audio work by Nauman from 1969; projects by Suzanne Lacy, a leading figure in the development of conceptual practice and public art; and an experimental text by Jane Rendell on psychic architectures. Conversations occur between the pages of Surface Tension, between theoretical analysis and modes of practice, that activate the publication as a site itself, one participating in a broad field of knowledge. Includes an audio CD of the sound art pieces."
Customer Reviews:
smart art.......2006-11-17
if you're an artist (or not) this series is a great way into site-specific art and issues surrounding space and place in today's culture. you get smart, scholarly discussions of site-based art practice, documentation of a wide range of cool projects around the world plus architecture criticism and cultural histories of things like gas stations and plumbing. . . the content is sometimes uneven, but i found overall the eclectic approach made for a better understanding of the field and the issues at stake right now.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Art Journal, published by Thomson Gale on September 22, 2005. The length of the article is 2804 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: The Site-Specificity of Everyday Life.(Surface Tension: Problematics of Site)(Book Review)
Author: Jill Dawsey
Publication:
Art Journal (Magazine/Journal)
Date: September 22, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 64
Issue: 3
Page: 129(3)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
Book Description
A handbag can make or break an outfit. Many people spend hours-and a lot of money-searching for the perfect bag and still come up empty handed. So what's the solution? Make one at home!
Handmade Bags provides easy to follow, step-by-step instructions for a wide range of different handbag styles, using a variety of materials. The 30 projects include everything from simple sequined felt bags to ornate leather designs. They include tote bags, a drawstring bag, a backpack, and wedding bag. Crafters of all skill levels will find a bag to suit every occasion and outfit.
Also includes explanations and descriptions of different materials, tools, techniques, and decorations, including professional tips and shortcuts to help achieve a perfect finish.
• Full-color photographs to guide readers
• 30 projects to inspire the novice and expert alike
• Create gorgeous, personalized handbags for self, friends, and family
Customer Reviews:
Rediculous looking things.......2006-08-31
Most of the purses in this book were so foolish looking I wouldn't use them if someone gave them to me, much less waste my time to make them. I was looking for bags to make and sell but I have found better ideas for free on the internet. To this books credit, it does give good instruction on construction basics such as pockets and linings.
Where are the patterns?.......2006-02-16
Handmade Bags is full of unique and gorgeous bags to make from a variety of materials, with detailed step-by-step instructions, tons of photos, and an introduction to basic sewing at the beginning.
This would be a fantastic book, BUT and this is a big BUT-there are no patterns. For the purses made out of alternative materials or knitted, this is not an issue, as the instructions and photos clearly show how to make the purse. For the sewn purses there is a small photo of a grid with a pattern outline shown and each grid square equals 2". The book has a section on how to make and use patterns, but for less experienced sewers this can be daunting. For purses in a basic square or rectangle shape making a pattern would be easy, but several of these bags have unique shapes so creating a pattern for them would be more difficult. Although it states how much fabric is needed for each purse, it doesn't give cut dimensions. Making the purses without patterns would be ok if the directions stated "cut the shape with a 16" base ending with a 20" fan shaped top."
Handmade Bags sends a mixed-message. It is written in a basic, mostly easy to use format that breaks the process down, so even a novice sewer could make make one of these bags, but the lack of patterns or cutting dimensions pushes it into the realm of experienced sewers. This makes the book frustrating for folks like me with basic sewing skills, but no experience or time to learn to make patterns.
Poor purses.......2005-06-03
This book is really well presented with amazing pictures and is easy to read. If you have any knowledge of sewing and any interest in making handbags that appear professional this is not the book for you, I think it should be reclassified as a craft book for kids. If you're an adult save your money.
Cool ideas!.......2004-07-16
There are a lot of cool ideas in this book, along with 30 bag patterns for you to follow. In addition to traditional fabric handbags, here are several "wire bag" designs in this book.
Written by professional accessory designers, this book is full of clever and innovative ideas. However, in spite of the creativity, I did not find many bags I would actually make.
However, it is well written with many good sewing tips. It even includes a fully illustrated section on hand-sewing which I found very useful.
If nothing else, this is a good "idea book".
Ho-Hum.......2004-01-06
I was looking for a starting point for making bags...this is not it. They have a few cool bags, but I was looking for something a little more "practical" and frankly, a little more "cool". You know? Buy this book if you want a coffee table book, but don't buy it for anything else...
Book Description
With Heavenly Handmade Bags crafters will learn to make beautiful bags using simple embroidery, knitting, beading and patchwork techniques. You'll find:
-A Step-by-step techniques section and stitch library to help you get a professional looking finish
-Over 25 exciting projects using gorgeous fabrics, threads and ribbons to create highly fashionable bags
-Full color charts and templates
From simple bags that can be made in an evening to more advanced projects, crafters of all skill levels will love creating and using these fashionable projects.
Customer Reviews:
Heavenly Handmade Bags.......2007-07-31
A great book to fire the imagination. Lots of ideas and colorful illustrations. A very good guide for getting started.
Book Description
There is nothing quite like owning a stylish, unique handmade bag that you have created yourself. Jenny Rolfe has used quilting and free machine embroidery techniques to create a stunning collection of bags for all occasions. All the techniques are explained fully, including how to make your own fabrics and cords to give your bags that really personal touch. The fabrics used include cottons, silks and felts, as well as the more exotic metallic organza, chiffon, velvet and netting. Variegated and metallic machine threads add texture, and the bags are futher embellished with beads, sequins, shisha mirrors and wire in various colours. Detailed step-by-step photographs accompany easy-to-follow text, and a sequence of projects illustrate how to construct, decorate and complete a range of different-shaped bags - one for every style and occasion.
Customer Reviews:
This is a great book!.......2007-04-16
I have several books on making purses, but with this book you can make beautiful purses in little time and with supplies that are easily obtained. I especially like the sections where author explains how to make the fabric for the purses. I haven't tried one yet, but after reading the instructions, I am confident that once I do sit down to tackle a purse from this book, it will be an enjoyable experience.
Amazon.com
The fifth volume in Fantagraphics Books' Complete Peanuts series welcomes a new character: Sally, Charlie Brown's baby sister. It's interesting to see how the perpetually beleaguered CB--criticized for having a "face" face or a "failure face--now takes on the responsibility of worrying about the world his sister will grow up in. His role as manager of the baseball team continues to bring him woe, losing 600-0, losing all 20 games of the season, making a daring attempt to steal home, and having to miss a game to push his sister's stroller. Linus, at first wondering if Sally will someday go out with him, gets his answer in spades: "Isn't he the cutest thing?" But he'd much rather lavish his attention on the new teacher, Miss Othmar ("I'm very fond of the ground on which she walks"), even if his eggshell project doesn't work out as planned. Snoopy, though threatened by a hanging icicle and a possible freeway through his home, still finds joy in being a gopher, the Big Man on Campus, or the Mad Punter. "Peanuts" was well into its classic years in the 1959-60 period, with such signature moments as "Happiness is a warm puppy" and a lot of material that would become familiar staples of the Christmas and Halloween television specials. --David Horiuchi
Book Description
The New York Times bestselling series concludes the first decade of Peanuts!
As the first decade of Peanuts closes, it seems only fitting to bid farewell to that halcyon decade with a cover starring Patty, one of the original three Peanuts.
Major new additions to classic Peanuts lore come fast and furious here. Snoopy begins to take up residence atop his doghouse, and his repertoire of impressions increases exponentially. Lucy sets up her booth and offers her first five-cent psychiatric counsel. (Her advice to a forlorn Charlie Brown: "Get over it.") For the very first time, Linus spends all night in the pumpkin patch on his lonely vigil for the Great Pumpkin (although he laments that he was a victim of "false doctrine," he's back 12 months later). Linus also gets into repeated, and visually explosive, scuffles with a blanket-stealing Snoopy, suffers the first depredations of his blanket-hating grandmother, and falls in love with his new teacher Miss Othmar.
Even more importantly, several years after the last addition to the cast ("Pig-Pen"), Charlie Brown's sister Sally makes her appearance—first as an (off-panel) brand new baby for Charlie to gush over, then as a toddler and eventually a real, talking, thinking cast member. (By the end of this volume, she'll already start developing her crush on Linus.)
All this, and one of the most famous Peanuts strips ever: "Happiness is a warm puppy."
Almost one hundred of the 731 strips collected in this volume (including many Sundays) have never been collected in any book since their original release, with one hundred more having been collected only once in relatively obscure and now impossible-to-find books; in other words, close to one quarter of the strips have never been seen by anyone but the most avid Peanuts completists.
The introduction is by comedienne extraordinaire Whoopi Goldberg, who reveals which Peanuts character she has tattooed on her body (and where)—as well as telling of her meeting with "Sparky" Schulz, and her fascinating theory on Snoopy's brother Spike. The Complete Peanuts continues to receive national and international media attention for its sophisticated treatment of one of the 20th Century's defining American classics.
Customer Reviews:
The Secret to Happiness.......2006-12-17
What is happiness? On April 25, 1960, Charles Schulz, through his character Lucy told us: Happiness is a warm puppy. This immortal sentence is just one of the things that appears in the fifth volume of The Complete Peanuts, which comprises the years 1959 and 1960. As in previous volumes, we see once again why Peanuts is considered by many to be the best comic strip ever.
In some sense, things have not changed from past volumes: Linus still has his blanket, Charlie Brown still can't fly a kite and Lucy is a champion fussbudget. On the other hand, things do move forward, albeit slowly. As original character Shermy (the first to ever speak in a Peanuts strip) becomes less significant, we get a new character with Charlie Brown's sister, Sally. Before she can even talk, she will have her heart broken by Linus, but don't worry, she'll recover fast.
Resiliency is the key to many of these characters, none more so than the strip's centerpiece, Charlie Brown. Constantly luckless and often ridiculed by his "friends" (only Linus, and occasionally Schroeder, are relatively consistent in being nice to him), Charlie Brown, despite his glumness is actually the eternal optimist. He never gives up on flying his kit or playing baseball or even his belief that one day, Lucy will actually allow him to kick that football.
Behind the deceptively simple drawing and the child characters (by this point in the strip, even the adult voices are gone), lies an often deep and sophisticated art, filled with wit and humanity. And like any piece of art that is great and immortal, it is timeless and as good now as ever, whether you're an adult or a child.
Sally and Linus: The Full Story, now coming out!.......2006-11-29
This issue gives us the first shots of Sally, plus some other developments. The baseball themes are being fleshed out (complete with mass-quitting of CB's team) and the Psychologist's Stand makes its debut.
What's most interesting is watching the beginning of Sally's crush on Linus. While the reprinted strips of before show Sally falling in love and Linus responding with revulsion, the new strips reveal some interesting tacks.
First, early on in the book (in a strip that hadn't seen the light of day in the reprints I had read over the years), Linus actually expresses an interest in Sally, wondering if she would be dateable at 17 (when he would be 22). One gets the idea that Schultz actually wanted to develop a situation where Linus was in love but his object was unrequited.
Later on in the book, Schultz hits gold: Sally falls, Linus is embarassed. While some of these strips are familiar, the section where Sally's heart breaks is new to my eyes. Towards the end of this book is a comic strip that is worth every penny: Sally sees Linus walk by and responds in a way that everyone has responded to a broken heart. Only Schultz could have reduced it to half a day's strip!
The Great Pumpkin, The Mad Punter, et. al........2006-10-21
The fifth volume of "The Complete Peanuts" covers the years 1959 and 1960. During this period, the four main characters are Charlie Brown, Lucy and Linus Van Pelt, and Snoopy. Schroeder, Violet, and Patti all have fewer appearances in the strip. Although, Schroeder has a clearly defined role which makes his character stand out more than the other two. Similarly, Pig Pen has a specific role while Shermy is a throw in character, despite the fact that both appear rarely. During this period, we have the first new character since the short-lived Charlotte Braun almost five years previously. Sally Brown is born on May 26th of 1959, we find out her name on June 2nd, and she makes her first appearance in the strip on August 23rd. We see her walking for the first time on August 22nd of the following year.
There are some classic firsts which appear in this book. One is the first strip to have Lucy's Psychiatrist stand, in which she offers the classic advice "Snap out of it!" to Charlie Brown, followed by "Five cents please." The Great Pumpkin is also mentioned for the first time in these strips. There are also some wonderful sequences here, including the impending destruction of Snoopy's doghouse to make way for a freeway bypass, Linus' crush on his teacher, Charlie Brown missing a baseball game to push Sally in her stroller, and many more.
As with the previous volumes in this series, the index is an amazing resource. If you want to look up the strips in which "The Mad Punter" appears, all you have to do is check the index. The Foreword in this edition was written by Whoppi Goldberg and she reflects on her interview of Charles M. Schultz, as well s the role "Peanuts" played in her own life. "Peanuts" was my favorite comic strip when I was young, and it is wonderful to read all these classic strips again. There are also many strips here which were never printed before, so it is a great pleasure to experience them for the first time.
The best comic strip ever written.......2006-08-23
The best ever written. It's very difficult not to relate to Charlie Brown. He is Joe Everyman. I can't wait for the rest of the strips to come out. A big mistake for a "Peanuts" fan not to own them.
Charlie Brown and Snoopy Are For Everyone, Not Just Christians.......2006-08-05
Eric Paddon said in his review that Whoopi Goldberg's "specialty is foul-mouthed hate diatribes toward anyone who isn't a raving leftist like her."
He also says Charles Schulz used lessons from the bible in his comic strip.
Please don't believe Mr. Paddon, a professor at a Christian college. Ms. Goldberg didn't put any hate in her introduction to this book. She loves the Peanuts.
You never had to believe in the New Testament or the Republican Party to enjoy the Peanuts. You don't now. I know a Muslim and a Buddhist who both enjoyed Mr. Schulz's comic strip for decades. Do Christian faculty members know that the cartoonist named Woodstock after that anti - family music festival ?
Please plunge in this wonderful collection of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Woodstock, Lucy, Linus and the rest of the gang. They are timeless. Maybe they can inspire today's children who show promise in cartoon art.
Product Description
Brand new! LEATHER BOUND book accented in 22kt gold!
Average customer rating:
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THE FIFTIES : 1959 - 1960 (The Complete Peanuts, Volume 5)
Charles M. Schulz
Manufacturer: Easton Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Leather Bound
 General
| Comic Strips
| Comics & Graphic Novels
| Subjects
| Books
Peanuts
| Comic Strips
| Comics & Graphic Novels
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Graphic Novels
| Comics & Graphic Novels
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: B000MMG9N8 |
Book Description
When Simon Doonan sat down to write a memoir, he discovered he had no memories of cuddly family times or romantic Hallmark moments -- turns out most of his memories are notably nasty. Birthday parties? No recollection. But his mother's dentures flying out of her mouth when she sneezed and skittering across the kitchen floor? A vivid mental image that still brings a smile. In his subversively funny memoir, Nasty: My Family and Other Glamorous Varmints, Simon revisits his formative years and the defiantly eccentric, lovably odd family he calls his own, showing us how nasty memories can be very, very good.
Long before he became a celebrity in his own right -- as a bestselling author, as a style arbiter on national television, and as the window display genius of Barneys New York -- Simon Doonan was a "scabby knee'd troll" in Reading, England. In Nasty, he returns to the working-class neighborhood of his youth and chronicles the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their wacky glory. Readers meet his mum, Betty, whose gravity-defying, peroxided hairdo loudly proclaimed her innate glamour; his father, Terry, an amateur vintner who turned parsnips into the legendary Château Doonan; and his grandfather D.C., a hard-drinking betting man who plotted to win his fortune by turning "wee" Simon into a jockey.
Fearing he would fall victim to the insanity that runs in his family or, worse, the banality of suburban life, Doonan decamps with his flamboyant best friend Biddie to London. There they hope to find the Beautiful People -- those glamorous creatures who luxuriate on floor pillows and amuse each other with bon mots -- and join their ranks. Instead, he encounters various ladies of the night, kidney stones, punks, law enforcement officers, phantom venereal diseases, public humiliations, and camps, vamps, and scamps of all shapes and sizes. Doonan continues his bumbling pursuit of the fabulous life only to learn, in the end, that perhaps the Beautiful People were the ones he left behind.
Infused throughout with good humor and informed by Doonan's keen eye for the ridiculous, Nasty reminds us never to take life too seriously. This is a wickedly good memoir from one of today's most dazzling literary humorists.
Customer Reviews:
FABULOUS CAN BE AS FALSE AS IT IS FUN. BRAVO!.......2007-02-16
[...]
NASTY is a funny, campy, saucy, uninhibited memoir of a scrawny, geeky, distinctly "unfabulous", gay kid from a working class neighborhood in Reading England who tries to climb up the unsteady ladder of success and fabulousness. Given the gargantuan ambition the youngster has to get his goal, it is not surprising that in a long tradition of self-creation (a la Madonna and uncountable others), he attains it. Simon finally gets "there". Mind you, it's not overnight, but for the reader, it's well worth the effort.
Simon, along with his queenie pal Biddie moves from what seemed to the teen-ager at the time very tacky, humble beginnings to less tacky environments, finally progressing to London and New York. On the way, he tries to fit in with what he thinks are "the beautiful people"--usually deceiving himself that he's right up "there" with the high and mighty. The results are hilarious and delightfully grotesque.
Eventually Simon realizes the "fabulous folks" aren't always so great after all. NASTY is a bright, witty exposure that "fabulous" can sometimes be as false as it is fun.
The author, Simon Doonan, is a fine debunker of illusions and self-dillusion. As an example of what the adolescent Simon thought was hot glam, he describes the attire he sported on the beach to impress the working classes of his North England town as they stood by probably regarding the spectacle as a form of weird "street theatre."
"What was wrong with them? Hadn't they ever seen a man in a Mickey Mouse shirt; high-waisted, navy blue, pleated Oxford bag trousers, and matching navy blue, women's Bata platform ankle boots with four-and-a-half inch heels, teetering across the sand before?"
Especially charming and probably the most truly fabulous are the nostgalgic accounts of Simon's childhood which seemed so meager at the time, but seen in retrospect take on a wonderfully authentic magic of their own. There is his eccentric but kindly, alcoholic mother Betty, with her enormous, peroxided blond hair piled high on her head--the envy of the neighborhood. There is Simon's father who proudly in the family kitchen made a very decent and popular wine distilled from turnips!
Woven into the memoir are wonderfully eccentric uncles, aunts and grandmothers who add mythic greatness to what the youngstger had considered "nasty" and forgettable at the time.
In real life, from his humble beginnings, Doonan became a well known author (WACKY CHICKS)and an envied window display artist at Barney's in New York City. He probably has to get on ladders to decorate the fabulous displays. He ought to know all about the climb.
Doonan has an iconoclastic wit akin to Noel Coward but his is much raunchier, and earthy! I must admit I hadn't expected to enjoy NASTY so much. HURRAY!
[...]
NASTY.......2006-07-27
did i say it was funny? deranged and funny! just the way i like them!
everybody should have a friend like Simon or at least an old aunt like Simon!
obviously the guy is insane and funny! pleazzzze get the book right now
every fashion victim should read it!
ps: buy a few floor pillows before you start reading it!
pedro
Eh.......2006-06-14
Eh? It was interesting but not a book I would recommend unless you are fascinated by the author through his other endevours. I just find it all a bit confusing and jumbled and there just didn't seem to be much of a point to the book. It was kind of like reading a [...] teens journal and seemed to just be a string of unrelated events that really didn't tie together for me.
There are better "autobiography" type books out there, I would pass on this one.
NASTY IS DELICIOUS .......2005-12-20
With NASTY Simon Doonan joins the likes of Sedaris and Augustin Burroughs in the hilarious dysfunctioinal gay memoir sweepstakes. I was enarmored of Doonan's tales of growing up with his lobomized Narg (granny), saucy Mom, strange aunts, best friend Biddie, and a plethora of other VERY memorable characters. By way of a thematic construct -- the book traces Noonan's lifelong quest for The Beautiful People and glamour in all shapes and forms -- and oh what a journey it is! There are laughs galore and several touching passages as well in this joyous romp through the past by born storyteller Doonan.
Laugh-out-Loud Funny.......2005-08-25
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. How could you not laugh out loud when he describes breaking the skull of his blind aunt (sounds sick, I know, but taken in context...). I recommend this book to anyone who needs a light read. I think this book is quite good.
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- The Collected Works of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Anthology)
- The Darkness That Comes Before (The Prince of Nothing, Book 1)
- The Death of Vishnu: A Novel
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Brandon LaBelle: Site Specific Sound With Audio CD
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