Bookshelf News

Little Paper Planes: 20 Artists Reinvent the Childhood Classic

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Little Paper Planes: 20 Artists Reinvent the Childhood Classic
Chronicle Books, 2012
Paperback, 84 pages, $19.95

Kelly Lynn Jones (MFA 2010, Painting/Drawing 2002), owner of the online artist store Little Paper Planes (which carries work by many CCA artists!), has created this awesome celebration of a timeless pastime. The book offers constructible paper airplanes and a few other airplane-inspired crafts, taking the paper plane to a whole new level, from paper-doll planes and shark planes to plane mobiles and mix-and-match gliders. Featuring work by rising stars and indie darlings as Gemma Correll, Michael Hsiung, Julia Rothman, Alyson Fox, and Lisa Congdon. Printed on perforated pages for easy removal and assembly, the planes are accompanied by instructions, artist interviews, and loads of visuals.

None of This Is Real

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

None of This Is Real
Sidebrow Books, 2012
Paperback, 115 pages, $18

Miranda Mellis (Writing faculty) imagines a not-too-alternate reality of philosophical children, reincarnating chimeras, mutant matriarchies, and kind seers adapting to affliction. These five fictions question what is knowable and what actions can be taken in the face of loss of family, heritage, ecosystems, agency, and power. A face incapable of masking its sneering rebellions; young sisters in search of their missing mother; a page whose very body extracts meaning from occult readings in response to alienation; a never-ending line for coffee that becomes a surreal site of quotidian wars in miniature. Mellis brings the playfulness of contemporary fabulism to bear on today's pressing ethical and political issues, exploring the potential and limits of magical thinking with empathy, subtle humor, and an engrossing mastery of the fictional form.

Under the Halo: The Official History of Angels Baseball

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Under the Halo: The Official History of Angels Baseball
Insight Editions, 2012
Hardcover, 264 pages, $50

Under the Halo: The Official History of Angels Baseball is designed by Graphic Design faculty Brett McFadden and Scott Thorpe of the firm MacFadden and Thorpe. From the team’s inaugural season in 1961 under the ownership of film legend Gene Autry, this book traces memorable moments, personalities, and accomplishments through first-person accounts by Angels past and present. It includes more than 300 images, a vintage scorecard, program guide reproductions, and a removable timeline.

Tag Toss and Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Tag Toss and Run: 40 Classic Lawn Games
Storey Publishing, 2012
Paperback, 208 pages, $14.95

Adam McCauley (Illustration faculty) illustrates this book by Paul Tukey and Victoria Rowell. Remember those long summer afternoons spent playing Kick the Can, Capture the Flag, and Wiffle Ball? Now, even if you can’t remember the difference between dodgeball and double ball, you can brush up on the rules of your favorite classics (plus learn a few new ones!) and begin some new family traditions with your own kids.

Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change

Posted on Thursday, April 19, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change
Laurence King Publishers, 2012
Paperback, 192 pages, $29.95

Fashion Design faculty Lynda Grose coauthors (together with Kate Fletcher) this book about the potential of sustainability to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the 21st century. The issues in fashion are broad-ranging and include labor abuses, toxic chemicals, and conspicuous consumption, giving rise to an undeniable tension between fashion and sustainability.

The book is organized into three parts. The first is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use and re-use. The second looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material throughput. The third is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or creator into a communicator, activist, or facilitator.

Amana Harris: Self as Super Hero: Handbook on Creating the Life-Size Self-Portrait

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Self as Super Hero: Handbook on Creating the Life-Size Self-Portrait
Sankofa Publishing, 2011
Kindle edition, $18

This book is by Amana Harris, CCA alumna and faculty member in Diversity Studies The ArtEsteem Self as Super Hero curriculum was inspired by a need for heroes for our children, youth, and communities. The heroes we need are defined as exceptional individuals or beings who inspire, protect, and serve, standing and taking action for justice and for the well-being of the environment, people, and animals. This multidisciplinary curriculum takes children, youth, and adults through a journey of self-exploration, family and cultural research, societal assessment, and development of aesthetic tools for artistic creation. The ArtEsteem Super Hero is a re-created version of self that embodies superpowers that help create a more loving and peaceful world. In the end, the goal is to allow you to stretch your imagination and integrate your ideas to expand and make this curriculum your own.

Zack Rogow: My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers
Kattywompus Press, 2012
Paperback, $18

My Mother and the Ceiling Dancers is MFA Program in Writing faculty Zack Rogow's seventh collection of poetry. The book is "Dedicated in loving memory of my mother, Mildred 'Mickey' Rogow: These poems celebrate her life and values, as well as the reasons for living that eluded her at points along her path." This is Kattywompus Press’s first full-length book, and it is hand-sewn, hand-glued, hand-bound.

Two of the poems have been nominated for the prestigious Pushcart Prize. Several of the poems have already been published in anthologies. A series of tanka poems in the collection won the Tanka Splendor Award for best tanka sequence in English. Melissa Stein, author of Rough Honey, says, "Zack Rogow's poems tenderly evoke life’s ironies, bitter and sweet. They have a passionate sweep: the East River to Venice canals, Van Gogh's ear to sandcastles, filterless Pall Malls to the dazzling, dying stars. And they have a big, beautiful, aching, resonant heart."

Georgia Bellflowers: The Furniture of Henry Eugene Thomas

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Georgia Bellflowers: The Furniture of Henry Eugene Thomas
Georgia Museum of Art, 2012
107 pages, $16

This catalogue is designed by Graphic Design faculty Brett McFadden and Scott Thorpe of the firm MacFadden and Thorpe to accompany the first-ever exhibition of works by Henry Eugene “Gene” (or “Shorty”) Thomas (1883-1965) at the Georgia Museum of Art. Thomas worked from his home in Athens, Georgia, as an antique dealer and furniture maker for more than four decades. Because he relied on locally found antiques for inspiration and because he favored local woods such as walnut, cherry and maple, his furniture has a distinctly regional flair. The exhibition features approximately 17 pieces of furniture and related ephemera.

Aimee Phan: The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong: A Novel
St. Martin's Press, 2012
Hardcover, 368 pages, $25.99

The Reeducation of Cherry Truong is a novel by Writing and Literature chair Aimee Phan about reverse migration, the new American immigrant story. Cherry Truong's attempt to reconnect to her mother's family reaches around the world, from America to Vietnam to France, and reinvents what she knows of her family's history and her world. It is a story of loyalties, histories, and identities, exploring multiple generations of the Truong and Vos families and touching on the events of the Vietnam War, cultural assimilation, reconciliation, forgiveness, and redemption.

Refract House

Posted on Thursday, March 8, 2012, by Lindsey Westbrook

Refract House
CCA, 2012
Hardcover, 68 pages, $25

Refract House explores the evolution of CCA's solar-powered house (a joint project with Santa Clara University) that competed in the 2009 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon. The competition brief was to design, build, and operate a maximally energy-efficient, attractive, and comfortable solar-powered house. Every detail was considered by the CCA student team, from the landscaping and the solar collection arrays to the furniture and plateware (made of California mud). CCA's house was awarded first place in architecture and communications, second in engineering, and third overall. It outperformed contributions from such renowned schools as Cornell and Virginia Tech.

The Refract House book reframes the team's efforts within a larger context of contemporary architectural practice. It is divided into four parts, addressing the conceptual trajectories underlying the project, the different design strategies that were explored, the integration of technological systems, and the material fabrication. It also discusses the implications of the project in terms of architectural education today. It features full-color photographs and renderings of every phase of the house's development. There is an introduction by CCA Architecture Director Ila Berman and essays by Ila Berman, Nataly Gattegno, Andrew Kudless, Tim Hight, Kate Simonen, Peter Anderson, Matt Hutchison, and Oblio Jenkins.

Purchase a copy by emailing Lia Wilson in CCA's Architecture Program: lwilson@cca.edu