Leonard Koren’s Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts reads less like a conventional monograph and more like an invitation to a practiced, patient conversation — half aphorism, half careful exegesis — with one of the thinnest and most capacious concepts in modern aesthetics. Where so many volumes try to define wabi-sabi by checklist or historical excavation, Koren treats … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Wabi-Sabi: Further Thoughts by Leonard Koren
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
Leonard Koren’s Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers reads less like a conventional treatise and more like a pocket anthology of aesthetic instructions and provocations — a distilled program for seeing differently. Its ambition is modest and precise: to translate a notoriously slippery Japanese sensibility into language useful to makers and thinkers in the … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets, & Philosophers by Leonard Koren
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – What Artists Do by Leonard Koren
Leonard Koren’s What Artists Do reads less like a conventional handbook and more like a pocket philosopher’s lecture delivered in fragments. The book is compact, aphoristic, and intentionally spare — a series of short meditations on the activities, habits, anxieties, and tiny triumphs that make up an artist’s working life. Koren does not attempt a … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – What Artists Do by Leonard Koren
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
Austin Kleon’s Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad (2019) completes the informal trilogy begun with Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work. Where the earlier volumes championed the playful theft of ideas and the vulnerability of artistic visibility, Keep Going emerges as the most meditative of Kleon’s works, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 500 Baskets: A Celebration of the Basketmaker’s Art by Susan Mowery Kieffer
In 500 Baskets: A Celebration of the Basketmaker’s Art, Susan Mowery Kieffer undertakes the ambitious task of distilling the vast, multivalent world of basketry into a single, arresting volume—an endeavour that, on its face, might seem quixotic. Yet Kieffer’s curatorial eye and writerly sensibility ensure that this is far more than a mere “coffee-table” compendium. Here, baskets become more than … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 500 Baskets: A Celebration of the Basketmaker’s Art by Susan Mowery Kieffer
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Ceramics in America by Robert Hunter
Ceramics in America, under the editorial stewardship of Robert Hunter, stands as a cornerstone publication for scholars, curators, and collectors devoted to the study of American ceramic arts. Now in its annual edition, the volume assembles rigorous scholarship that traverses the aesthetic, technological, and social dimensions of ceramic production from colonial times through the twentieth … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Ceramics in America by Robert Hunter
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose by Robin Hopper
Robin Hopper’s Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose (2011) reads at first like a how‑to manual, but under the guise of practical instruction lies a quietly profound meditation on the very nature of utility, beauty, and the relationship between maker, object, and user. Hopper—a potter whose career spanned continents and whose teaching influenced generations of … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Functional Pottery: Form and Aesthetic in Pots of Purpose by Robin Hopper
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Robbin Hopper Ceramics: A Lifetime of Works, Ideas and Teachings by Robin Hopper
Robin Hopper’s memoir-cum-manual stands as a singular achievement in contemporary ceramics literature, marrying the reflective tone of autobiography with the precision of a practical studio guide. From the first chapter, Hopper situates his personal narrative within the broader arc of postwar craft movements, offering a nuanced perspective on how the tides of modernism, folk traditions, … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Robbin Hopper Ceramics: A Lifetime of Works, Ideas and Teachings by Robin Hopper
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Contemporary Wicker Basketry:Projects, Techniques,Inspirational Designs by Flo Hoppe
Contemporary Wicker Basketry by Flo Hoppe offers both the novice and the seasoned basket-maker an elegant synthesis of tradition and innovation. In this richly illustrated volume, Hoppe contextualizes wickerwork within a lineage stretching from ancient utilitarian forms to today’s sculptural explorations. She deftly balances a respect for time‑honored techniques with an enthusiasm for fresh, personalized expression. Scope … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Contemporary Wicker Basketry:Projects, Techniques,Inspirational Designs by Flo Hoppe
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!: The Entertainment Solution for Parents, Relatives, and Babysitters by Holly Homer and Rachel Miller
Holly Homer and Rachel Miller’s 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever! reads like a manifesto for the revival of unstructured play, a bold rejoinder to the regimented schedules and screen-centric routines common in twenty‑first‑century childhood. At first glance, the exuberant title—with its intentional grammatical liberties (“bestest,” “funnest”)—signals an authorial choice to privilege the’s child’s-eye … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – 101 Kids Activities That Are the Bestest, Funnest Ever!: The Entertainment Solution for Parents, Relatives, and Babysitters by Holly Homer and Rachel Miller
The New Renaissance Mindset 