Octobers are usually filled with witchy tales, but Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers celebrates rather damns the women within its pages. Poet Taisia Kitaiskaia and artist Katy Horan joined forces to draw a powerful connection between witches and visionary female writers through written and painted portraits that honor well-known and obscure authors alike.
Splice is a collaborative project between photographer Andrew McGibbon and art director Cassandra Fumi. Each piece of ice art is only temporary – an act of self-destruction on display for only a short amount of time. Beet juice, puzzle pieces, toy cars and more filled each block before being photographed and dissipating entirely. What’s more, each print is a unique one of a kind, meaning there is only one print available for each piece.
Erika Sanada‘s Odd Things sculptures are beautifully disturbing. Her strange, creepy creatures have extra body parts or small deformities that set them apart while also resembling adorable animals that you wouldn’t mind snuggling up with. I love the detailed skin and musculature that Sanada captures so well.
I Wonder by Marian Bantjes
This book features the elaborately crafted word pictures of Marian Bantjes, the most inventive and creative typographic illustrator of our time. Whether intricately hand-drawn or using computer illustration software, Bantjes’s work crosses the boundaries of time, style, and technology. There is, however, another side to Bantjes’s visual work: her thoughtful treatises on art, design, beauty, and popular culture that add a deeper dimension to the decorative nature of her best-known work. Intended to inspire creatives of any persuasion, this is more than a collection of ideas: Bantjes has meticulously illustrated every page of the book in her inimitable style to create an accessible work of art that is far greater than the sum of its parts.
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
In 1925, the legendary British explorer Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungle in search of a fabled civilization. He never returned. Over the years countless perished trying to find evidence of his party and the place he called The Lost City of Z. In this masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, journalist David Grann interweaves the spellbinding stories of Fawcett’s quest for Z and his own journey into the deadly jungle, as he unravels the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century.
Six Women of Salem by Marilynne K. Roach
The first work to use the lives of a select number of representative women to illuminate the larger crisis of the Salem witch trials. By the end of the trials, beyond the twenty who were executed and the five who perished in prison, 207 individuals had been accused, 74 had been “afflicted,” 32 had officially accused their fellow neighbors, and 255 ordinary people had been inexorably drawn into that ruinous and murderous vortex, and this doesn’t include the religious, judicial, and governmental leaders. By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout this horrific time and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged.
Bibliophile: An Illustrated Miscellany by Jane Mount
Book lovers rejoice! In this love letter to all things bookish, Jane Mount brings literary people, places, and things to life through her signature and vibrant illustrations. A source of endless inspiration, literary facts and recommendations: Bibliophile is pure bookish joy and sure to enchant book clubbers, English majors, poetry devotees, aspiring writers, and any and all who identify as book lovers.
Corn-Fed: Cul-de-sacs, Keg Stands, and Coming of Age in the Midwest by Melanie LaForce
Poignant, humorous, and honest, Corn-Fed will take you from childhood overnight camp, to a first job at Dairy Queen, to the ultimate culmination of rich and debaucherous adult friendships. Corn-Fed follows LaForce’s growth, struggles, and exhilaration with communities of women over the course of life. Most importantly, this book contains critical references to boobs and butter.
Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne
What does it mean to be a designer in today’s corporate-driven, overbranded global consumer culture? Citizen Designer attempts to answer this question with more than seventy debate-stirring essays and interviews espousing viewpoints ranging from the cultural and the political to the professional and the social. This edition contains a collection of definitions and brief case studies on topics that today’s citizen designers must consider, including new essays on social innovation, individual advocacy, group strategies, and living as an ethical designer.
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.
Creativity Takes Courage: Dare to Think Differently by Irene Smit and Astrid van der Hulst
It’s not always easy to be creative — it takes courage. Organized around a series of twelve “dares” — including Dare to Fail, Dare to Be a Kid, Dare to Be Bored, Dare to Go Offline, Dare to Collaborate — Creativity Takes Courage encourages the reader to be fully present and spend idle time staring out the window. To leave your comfort zone and start a project, without hesitation, and nourish yourself with museum visits and reading time. Each dare includes fill-in pages and prompts to go deeper into what motivates us or hinders us, like mindful questions to identify fears of failure, or a Dare to Commit notebook for recording both daily and weekly projects.
A Few Minutes of Design: 52 Activities to Spark Your Creativity by Emily Campbell
This colorful, handy card deck presents fifty-two exercises and activities to jump-start your creative juices, free you from creative block, start a new project, or finish an existing one. Each exercise offers insight into the innumerable small decisions involved in design: how to establish a pattern, continue a series, how to say it without words, how to name a project, what fits, and what doesn’t? These cards benefit established practicing designers or creatives in any field with activities that are sometimes playful, sometimes challenging, but always enlightening.
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
In 1922, Count Alexander Rostov is deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, and is sentenced to house arrest in the Metropol, a grand hotel across the street from the Kremlin. Rostov, an indomitable man of erudition and wit, has never worked a day in his life, and must now live in an attic room while some of the most tumultuous decades in Russian history are unfolding outside the hotel’s doors. Unexpectedly, his reduced circumstances provide him entry into a much larger world of emotional discovery.
Artist Yu Maeda was born in Kumamoto, Japan and now calls Southern California home. Subjects like skulls, knives, brains, and blood usually have a sinister air about them, but Maeda’s brightly colored, gape-mouthed creatures seem way too energetic and happy for any of that nonsense!
Alberto Ortega‘s landscape paintings depict homes and streets where people live their everyday lives, though their presence is only hinted at through parked cars and glowing windows.
As an immigrant to the United States, I am intrigued by American suburban life as depicted in film, literature, and visual art. Through the images I create of American homes, buildings, and man-made environments, I seek to portray society and some of its contradictions. These scenes represent hopes and dreams, the threat of their failure, and alienation. I hope that my paintings set a stage that allows a drama to play out within the viewer.
Circuit Chandlier is a two-dimensionally structured pendant with the ambiance of a chandelier inspired by the graphic expression of circuit boards. Andréason & Leibel partnered in this project with Csaba Humenyik of Humi, glass producer of custom made chemistry glass products.
Painterly Spectrum Resin Table Lamp brings colors and their associations into a space as an object. It’s made of epoxy resin that’s cast on the surface of parchment paper onto which different colored strokes are applied using latex paint. When it’s lit the light source makes abstract associations visible in a transient way.
Sun Lights is a series of lamps created by the exploration of the displacement of light. Inspired by sun-gazing, the muted light provides a warm glow with a color gradient similar to dawn and sunset. The like-absorbing acrylate, in combination with the dimmable LED illumination, provides subtle mood lighting, in which the reflection of the material creates depth. Available in a variety of color options.
Little Sun Diamond Outdoor Lamp features a crystalline faceted lens and is inspired by nature. This pocket-sized, featherweight, solar-powered LED lamp was conceived to bring clean, affordable light to 1.1 billion people living worldwide without electricity in off-grid areas. For those without electricity, it’s a clean, steadfast alternative to dangerous and polluting forms of light like kerosene lanterns. Every lamp sold delivers one Little Sun to an African community without electricity at a locally affordable price. Five hours of sunlight charging produces five hours of power.
Walter Table Light has a unique 1960s feel inspired by space age design, with a striking combination of either satin brass or satin copper and a choice of opal or anthracite glass shades. The lights are available in two sizes and they have an integral dimmer on the base.
The Voie light series is the result of an investigation into the manipulation of light-paths. Having chosen neon, the base creates an interception on the path the light follows through the marble base. Subtle nuances and the uniqueness of each block of stone are highlighted when lit-up.
Damien Hirst is known for being a somewhat controversial artist, but his The Anatomy of an Angel Carrera marble hewn sculpture caught my eye months ago and remained in the back of my mind. Hirst’s fascination with beauty, religion, science, life, and death are all come together as the feminine figure is dissected down to different levels of organs and bone.
Jenna Barton – aka Dappermouth – is a Utah-based illustrator passionate about design and animal forms. Her work feels dark, yet hopeful thanks to the frequent presence of animals that are often associated with the mystical – wolves and deer.
Now that’s it’s almost time to start layering up again, it’s also time to think about where to put all of those layers when you’re not wearing them. If you’re lucky enough to have a coat closet or the like, check out these steel IKO IKO Hangers! They’re technically designed as shirt/dress, pant, and towel hangers, but I’d rather show them off.
