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 – Frida Kahlo: 1907-1954 Pain and Passion by Andrea Kettenmann
Andrea Kettenmann’s Frida Kahlo: 1907–1954 – Pain and Passion stands as one of the most perspicacious art‐historical studies of Kahlo’s life and work. Merging rigorous archival scholarship with a sensitive reading of visual and textual materials, Kettenmann offers readers not simply a chronology of events, but a nuanced portrait of an artist whose identity was inextricably bound … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Frida Kahlo: 1907-1954 Pain and Passion by Andrea Kettenmann
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors by Jane Kallir
In Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors, Jane Kallir offers not merely a catalog of Schiele’s extraordinary draftsmanship but a nuanced exploration of the artist’s tumultuous inner life, aesthetic evolution, and the historical milieu that shaped him. Kallir, herself heir to Vienna’s Sezessionist legacy, brings a curator’s eye and a scholar’s rigour to her analysis, guiding the … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Egon Schiele: Drawings and Watercolors by Jane Kallir
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – History of Art by H. W. Janson
First appearing in 1962, H. W. Janson’s History of Art swiftly established itself as the preeminent undergraduate survey of Western visual culture, ultimately selling over four million copies across fifteen languages (Wikipedia). Conceived as a comprehensive, single‑volume narrative from Paleolithic cave paintings through mid‑20th‑century Modernism, its success lay in synthesizing vast chronologies into an accessible yet authoritative text. Structure … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – History of Art by H. W. Janson
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Gnomes by Wil Huygen, Illustrated by Rien Poortvliet
An Ethnographic Fantasy at the Crossroads of Folklore and Natural History Wil Huygen’s Gnomes (1977) stands as a singular achievement in the realm of illustrated fantasy: it masquerades as a serious field guide, yet unfolds into a rich tapestry of myth, ecology, and cultural commentary. Framed as the definitive monograph on the secret lives of gnomes, Huygen’s … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Gnomes by Wil Huygen, Illustrated by Rien Poortvliet
The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Creative Concrete Ornaments for the Garden: Making Pots, Planters, Birdbaths, Sculpture More by Sherri Warner Hunter
Sherri Warner Hunter’s Creative Concrete Ornaments for the Garden invites readers into a world where the utilitarian meets the poetic, transforming raw cement into vessels of whimsy and wonder. Hunter, a seasoned artisan and educator, structures the book as both a technical manual and a meditation on the sculptural possibilities of a humble medium. At once precise … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Creative Concrete Ornaments for the Garden: Making Pots, Planters, Birdbaths, Sculpture More by Sherri Warner Hunter
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 – Goya by Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes’s Goya stands as a tour de force of art history writing, blending rigorous scholarship with the flair of a seasoned cultural critic. Far more than a catalog of paintings, Hughes’s study excavates the fertile contradictions of Francisco Goya’s life and work—his oscillation between courtly success and outsider defiance, his engagement with Enlightenment optimism and his … Continue reading The Adaptable Educator’s Book Review – Goya by Robert Hughes
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 New Renaissance Mindset 