Dusty, Dull Books on a Land Library Shelf

Why did this book become the Land Library’s page-by-page preoccupation over the past week? It’s title might seem a bit dull: Fodder and Pasture Plants, written by George H. Clark and M. Oscar Malte, and published in 1913 by the Department of Agriculture, Canada.

But here is where our reading experience changed. Our sense of touch was engaged first. The 100-year old cloth cover gave us a tactile pleasure that no modern dust jacket can provide. As we delved into the text, there was much to learn from Clarke and Malte’s complete botanical description of each plant, unexpectedly enlivened by occasional quotes from the likes of Xenophon, Pliny, Virgil, Chaucer, and Shakespeare!

Books are built of chapters and parts. Here’s the part we love best from our century-old copy of Fodder and Pasture Plants: more than 25 full-color plates, from the brush of Norman Criddle. Here’s just two of Criddle’s beautiful depictions:

“Brome grass is extensively grown in Hungary, where the climate is much like that of the Canadian West…“

“Red Top is indigenous to all European countries, Northern Africa, North and Central Asia, and North America.“

from the preface:

“It is, therefore, the purpose of this book to provide, in a form convenient for reference, fairly comprehensible information about those grasses, clovers, and other fodder and pasture plants that are generally to be of value in Canada.“

Yes — and maybe something more!

Our thanks goes to the folks at Small Farmer’s Journal. Their recent feature led us to the Land Library’s most recent acquisition — Clarke & Malte’s Fodder and Pasture Plants!

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When the Earth was Young

“Rock painting was our species’ first artistic adventures, our first celebration of the natural world, maybe our first crucial step into reflective self-consciousness. Tony Hopkins’ extraordinary artistic project, to witness this art from the chalk-hills of England to the shaman caves of South Africa, and then paint the paintings himself, gives a uniquely sympathetic insight into this first flowering of the human imagination.” — Richard Mabey.

For over twenty years, British artist Tony Hopkins has traveled in pursuit of the globe’s most remarkable rock art sites. The result is one of the most intriguing books we’ve seen this year — Pecked and Painted: Rock Art, from Long Meg to Giant Wallaroo, a wonderfully rich volume full of the author’s photographs, field sketches, finished paintings, and extensive journal entries. Hopkins truly went far and wide in his rock art quest: Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan, Egypt, and the American Southwest. No two sites were the same, but as Tony Hopkins describes, something universal shone through:

“Whatever its meaning when the earth was young, rock art speaks to us now of a time when people lived their lives close to nature, in tune with the rhythm of the earth. It is no coincidence that most rock art is associated with what we think of today as wilderness areas, the far reaches of temporal and spiritual existence, wild landscapes where the past is still visible in the present, where what is most special has to do with the way we respond to nature.“

Hopkins’ words perfectly describe why the Land Library has built a 20 year collection of books devoted to prehistoric art. Starting with North America, and volumes such as these:

The Serpent and the Sacred Fire: Fertility Images in Southwest Rock Art by Dennis Slifer, Plains Indian Rock Art by James D. Keyser & Michael A. Klassen , Legacy on Stone: Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners Region by Sally J. Cole.

But before long, those universal themes mentioned above, led us to seek out volumes such as these:

Rock Art of the Dreamtime by Josephine Flood, The Hunter’s Vision: The Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe by Peter Garlake, The Archaeology of Rock-Art edited by Christopher Chippindale and Paul Tacon.

along with Jean Clottes’ classic and comprehensive World Rock Art:

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There will be a way, there will be a light

One of the most moving parts of Ken Burns’ recent PBS series on the National Parks, focused on the Japanese-American artist Chiura Obata, and his life long devotion to Yosemite and the High Sierra. Obata’s first trip to Yosemite in 1927 marked the rest of his life’s work. If you have five minutes to spare please take a look at the PBS clip posted below. It swept us up with feelings of hope and a real admiration for people who fall head-over-heels for a particular landscape.
Seeing Ken Burns’ sensitive portrait had us reaching for a few books off the Land Library’s shelves. For more on Chiura Obata, an excellent volume (full of his sumi ink paintings, watercolors, and woodblock prints) is Obata’s Yosemite: The Art and Letters of Chiura Obata from his trip to the High Sierra in 1927.

In some ways, perhaps even more remarkable is the following book, which tells the story of the Obata family’s internment during World War II. Not to be undone, Obata organized Art Schools in each camp he was sent to, and personally produced a remarkable body of work:

Chiura Obata’s alien registration card, Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata’s Art of the Internment, edited by Kimi Kodani Hill, Moonlight over Topaz, 1942.

And here’s a very special book, from our Waterton Canyon Kids Library:

Evening Glow of Yosemite Falls, 1930, Nature Art with Chiura Obata by Michael Elsohn Ross, Death’s Grave Pass & Tenaya Peak, 1930

Obata teaching a children’s art class, Tanforan Detention Center, California, August 1942.

Upper Lyell Fork, near Lyell Glacier, Lake Basin in the High Sierra.

Chiura Obata sketching in the High Sierra, along with untitled painting.

It’s hard not to be inspired by Obata’s life story, and the work he produced. We also love what he wrote in 1965: “You must always see with a big vision, and if you keep your mind calm there will be a way, there will be a light.“

Please enjoy this wonderful clip!

Haruko & Chiura Obata, San Francisco, 1912.

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The Quick Indication of a Gesture

“In his forty-plus-year painting career, Kuhn painted African cats, Alaskan moose, and North American foxes. He painted majestic, stoic males, families interacting, and predators after prey. In the vast majority of his work, he put the animal front and center. These are not landscapes with animals thrown in, but studies of the creatures that inhabit the planet we share.” — Adam Duncan Harris

It’s exciting to think of all the young artists and naturalists who will be inspired by this beautiful new book. Bob Kuhn: Drawing on Instinct, edited by Adam Duncan Harris, was produced in association with a traveling exhibit organized by the National Museum of Wildlife Art. Here’s some brief background from the Museum’s website on Robert Kuhn (1920-2007):

“Robert Kuhn was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. As a boy, he began to observe and draw animals at the nearby Buffalo Zoo. In 1937, Kuhn attended the Pratt Institute in New York City where he studied design, anatomy, and life-drawing. For the next 30 years, he was one of the most popular wildlife illustrators in America. In 1970, Kuhn turned exclusively to easel painting.“

One of the strengths of this massive new book is the juxtaposition of Kuhn’s rarely seen sketches alongside his vibrant finished paintings. It’s also clear how much Kuhn loved the landscape of both Africa and his native North America!

“The stacks of studies he left behind represent a largely unseen aspect of his stories career. A sample of sketches is reproduced here (the tip of the iceberg) to be appreciated as the building blocks upon which paintings are constructed and as works of art in their own right.” — Adam Duncan Harris

From hundreds of sketches, came many finished works:

Rear Guard, 1977

“He was considered by many to be the greatest painter of mammalian subject matter in modern times and, in the eyes of critics, the finest wildlife artist of his generation. Masterfully he handled African megafauna as confidently as he did creatures in his native North America…” — Todd Wilkinson

Flat Out, 1985

“Living part of the year in Tucson, I am painfully aware of the brilliance of sunlight, pervading the landscape and everything in it. At one point in the creation of Flat Out, I decided to take the painting, a relatively small one, out to the rocky slope behind our house and paint what I found there. You might question whether either coyote or rabbit would venture out at the brightest, hottest time of day. I can only say that if it happened, as it surely could, then the chase might look about as I’ve painted it.” — Bob Kuhn

Here’s a short film clip of the artist at work, courtesy of the National Museum of Wildlife Art:

“Putting pencil or chalk to paper can, as no photograph can, plant knowledge of animal form and character in your memory bank.” — Bob Kuhn

Silent as the Snow, 1979

“To draw animals from life is to court frustration. Unless they are asleep they seldom cooperate. Most pages in my sketchbooks are filled with bits and pieces, starts that were interrupted by the subjects refusal to hold still. Frequently, the quick indication of a gesture is all you can manage, and all you should attempt. You might decide to make a careful study of an animal’s head, and arrangement of limbs, a paw or some other segment of the whole animal. It matters not. Nor does it matter too much if you mislay a sketch book or two. The real gain is in your growing knowledge of your subject.” — Bob Kuhn

We can’t wait for people to get excited about this book! It also reminds us of one of our all-time favorite works on wildlife art:

–By the Light of a Coleman Lantern: The Alaskan Field Sketches of William D. Berry

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Prettier than Powerpoint!

Classroom teachers would unroll their wall charts for the day’s lessons — bright and vividly colored canvasses, specifically designed so that pupils in the back rows could see. Most charts were devoid of text, a ploy of hopeful teachers to enhance class participation. Before the advent of richly illustrated school books (or slides), these charts opened a window to another world for generations of school kids.

A wonderful new book documents this lost art form: The Art of Instruction: Vintage Educational Charts from the 19th and 20th Centuries. This gorgeous over-sized book reproduces charts of many different styles, but most pages are devoted to the German firm of Jung-Koch-Quentell.

Here’s a quick visual tour of one of our favorite new books of the year!

Botanical Chart produced in France by Les Editions Rossignol

And here’s a stunning assortment of charts from Jung-Koch-Quentell:

Assorted botanical features, Garden Tulip, Tulipa gesneriana

Common Hair Moss, Polytrichum commune, Swiss Moss Fern, Selaginella helvetica

Red Starfish, Asterias rubens, Grass Snake and Horned Viper

Red Ant, Formice rufa, Housefly, Musca domestica

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A Long and Sympathetic Search: Maynard Dixon and the West

“From 1900 to his death in 1946, Maynard Dixon roamed the American West’s plains, mesas, and deserts — by foot, horseback, buckboard, and ultimately, the dreaded automobile — drawing, painting, and expressing his creative personality in poems, essays, and letters in a quest to uncover the region’s spirit.” — Donald J. Hagerty, The Life of Maynard Dixon

Early on, Maynard Dixon and the American West became inexorably linked. In 1901 he joined fellow artist Edward Borein on a rugged horseback trip through several Western states. What he saw changed his life, and can still be traced in the many paintings, sketches and illustrations that would follow.

Donald Hagerty has captured the remarkable life and work of Maynard Dixon in two recent books. The Art of Maynard Dixon is a large-format monograph, and the next best thing to viewing Dixon’s work in galleries across the country. As much as we love this hefty book, our favorite is Hagerty’s The Life of Maynard Dixon — an illuminating biography that is also one of the most brilliantly designed books we’ve seen in many years. Color images of Dixon’s paintings and illustrations accompany nearly every page of this incredibly rich biography.

The Life of Maynard Dixon is also full of black & white photos from Dixon’s life — here’s Dixon with his wife Edith Hamlin, a noted San Francisco muralist.

Hagerty also documents the more commercial work Dixon undertook. Dixon’s illustrations were featured in several magazines such as Sunset, Scribners, Colliers, Century Magazine, and McClures. To make ends meet he also crafted billboard images such as The Apache Trail via the Southern Pacific, 1917 (pictured above).

It’s a great joy to see the full range of Dixon’s work preserved in Donald Hagerty’s books!

This is the land of mesas, laid down in layers of colored sandstone, red, yellow, pink, and creamy white; carved and hollowed by the recession of forgotten seas; their sides often sheer, or broken into strange isolated slabs, turrets, buttes — the blind blunt architecture of a pre-human world. — Maynard Dixon

Here’s a short film clip, where you’ll have the chance to meet Donald Hagerty and learn more about the life and work of Maynard Dixon:

My object has always been to get close to the real nature of my subject as possible — people, animals and country. The melodramatic Wild West idea is not for me the big possibility. The nobler and more lasting qualities are in the quiet and most broadly human aspects of western life. I aim to interpret, for the most part, the poetry and pathos of the life of western people, seen amid the grandeur, sternness and loneliness of their country. — Maynard Dixon

White Buttes, Utah, 1944

Through long and sympathetic searching, he learned how the almost imperceptible contours of flat plains rise and fall as they flow toward the horizon and how the architecture of mesas and buttes marches rhythmically over the landscape, swelled with the freedom of a deep blue sky. — Donald J. Hagerty, The Life of Maynard Dixon

Open Range, 1942

I do not paint Indians or cowboys merely because they are picturesque subjects, but because through them I can express that phantasy of freedom of space and thought, which will give the world a sentiment about these people which is inspiring and uplifting. — Maynard Dixon

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From the African Savannah to the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming

It’s always a thrill to come across a new book by David Lewis-Williams, a world leading rock art-expert for over thirty years. His latest book centers on the prehistory of his native South Africa: Deciphering Ancient Minds: The Mystery of San Bushman Rock Art (co-authored with Sam Challis).

The prehistoric San people left a remarkable number of picture galleries across east and southern Africa, some dating back to approximately 27,000 years ago. Deciphering Ancient Minds is richly illustrated, and full of insights into San beliefs and ways of thought — showing the prehistoric bushman society to be easily as complex and sophisticated as our own:

“Though less well known, these spiritual panoramas rival in complexity, detail and variety the Ice Age painted caverns of Western Europe, ancient Egyptian art and the intricately carved Maya temples and stelae.“

Lewis-Williams’ earlier book, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art (also pictured above), is mainly focused on the wall and ceiling art found in French and Spanish caves, making it an excellent compliment to Deciphering Ancient Minds.

David Lewis-Williams, professor emeritus, Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

The Eland, a spiral-horned antelope of east and southern Africa — and a favorite subject of the San bushman artists.

Bringing this subject closer to home, Deciphering Ancient Minds spends a chapter comparing & contrasting prehistoric African rock art with the intriguing images from the Dinwoody tradition of the High Plains — highlighting the work of Julie Francis & Lawrence Loendorf, past participants of the Rocky Mountain Land Series:

For more on Rock Art & Cave Paintings be sure to check out our earlier posts!

–When the Earth Was Young

–Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams

And for more on the Rock Art of the San Bushmen, here’s a 4 minute film clip produced by the Africa Heritage Fund, highlighting Giant’s Castle in the Drakensberg Mountains:

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Sketch, Paint, and Listen to the Stories

“Talk about high-class detective stories! What Raymond Chandler did for L.A., Laura Cunningham does for the forests, meadows, and riverbanks of the Golden State. This brings a lost world straight back to life — and one hopes it will help us work to restore it in the real world, not just in the pages of a book.” — Bill McKibben

Where there are towns, sleek freeways, and bustling cities, Laura Cunningham imagines what came before — the ancestral California landscape of salt marsh, grassland, mountain, and oak savanna. The happy result of Laura Cunningham’s imaginings is the most exciting combination of eloquent text and inspiring art that we have seen for quite some time — A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California.

Laura Cunningham is an artist and naturalist who studied paleontology and biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She has produced a book that demands a slow page-by-page pursuit of a new brand of historical ecology. It’s hard to know what excites us the most about this book; the riveting story she tells with her words, or the wonderful images she has created. As much as we love her vivid paintings, we have a special fondness for her pages of black-and-white field sketches. They remind us of a terrific artist-naturalist we wrote about last year, William D. Berry!

Laura Cunningham’s book has lessons to teach anyone, no matter where you live:

“As I dove deeper into the richness of California landscapes, what struck me most were not the individual animals and plants, nor even the vision of cityscapes erased back to natural habitats, but the processes that affect the world, including us. Things such as fire, climate change, disturbance, and species interactions.“

For more on Laura Cunningham and her work, be sure to visit her website!

A grizzly, long ago, wanders the blue oak and feathergrass hills of the South Coast Range, 1997. Laura Cunningham

“I have approached this work as an artist-naturalist might if she could visit Old California to explore, take notes, sketch, paint, and listen to the stories told about the changing landscape and wildlife.” — from A State of Change

A reconstruction of San Francisco around 1300 A.D. from Nob Hill, looking east across the bay toward Oakland. Laura Cunningham

“The wonderful aspect of discovering old landscapes is that anyone can do it. You don’t have to have a Ph.D., simply good powers of observation and lots of curiosity. I describe activities throughout the book for the landscape detective, and the beneficial side effects include getting us closer to the land itself.” — from A State of Change

The Land Library first obtained a copy of A State of Change for the simple fact that it was published by Heyday Books, one of our all-time favorite publishers. Few regions are as well served as California has been by Heyday. In a future post we hope to write more about their work, and their founder Malcolm Margolin, but for now here’s a fun selection of Heyday titles from the Land Library’s shelves!

Starting off with two of our favorite Heyday titles, featuring the wonderful partnership of Gary Snyder’s words, and Tom Killion’s dramatic images: The High Sierra of California, and Tamalpais Walking: Poetry, History and Prints.

A California Bestiary by Rebecca Solnit & Mona Caron, the forthcoming Rise of the Ranges of Light: Landscapes and Change in the Mountains of California by David Scott Gilligan (here we go again, assuming a book is good just because it comes from Heyday!), Indian Summer: Traditional Life Among the Choinumne Indians of California’s San Joaquin Valley by Thomas Jefferson Mayfield, The Wild Muir: Twenty-two of John Muir’s Greatest Adventures, edited by Lee Stetson (for more on this fun title, be sure to catch our earlier post!).

Sally Carrighar’s classic of the Sierras: One Day on Beetle Rock, Nature’s Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir’s Botanical Legacy by Bonnie Gisel & Stephen Joseph, The Shirley Letters: From the California Mines, 1851-1852 by Louise Clappe, and A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California Before the Gold Rush, edited by Joshua Paddison.

Keep up-to-date on all the great work underway at Heyday Books by visiting their website!

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Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams

France’s Chauvet Cave is home to the oldest art work known to man. Discovered in 1994, Chauvet’s cave paintings have been dated at 32,000 years ago, making them roughly twice as old as the renowned cave art at Lascaux. Access to both caves has been restricted for years — even the breath of humans can damage the paintings. Fortunately for all of us, legendary film director Werner Herzog was recently given the chance to fully document the wonders of Chauvet. His new film Cave of Forgotten Dreams captures the charcoal etchings of unknown ancient artists. The drawings of animals (bison and mammoth among them) are especially alive, supple, and seemingly drawn only yesterday.

Here’s a short film clip on Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams:

Early in the process, Werner Herzog made the decision to film Chauvet Cave in 3-D:

“Once you see the cave with your own eyes, you realize it had to be filmed in 3-D. I’ve never used the process in the 58 films I made before and I have no plans to do it ever again, but it was important to capture the intentions of the painters. Once you saw the crazy niches and bulges and rock pendants in the walls, it was obvious it had to be in 3-D.”

Until Cave of Forgotten Dreams plays in your area, here’s a few more excellent resources from the Land Library’s shelves!

Return to Chauvet Cave: Excavating the Birthplace of Art by Jean Clottes, Dawn of Art: The Chauvet Cave by Jean-Marie Chauvet, et. al.

The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists by Gregory Curtis, Stepping-Stones: A Journey through the Ice Age Caves of the Dordogne by Christine Desdemaines-Hugon, Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art by Paul G. Bahn, et. al.

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When the Earth Was Young

“Rock painting was our species’ first artistic adventures, our first celebration of the natural world, maybe our first crucial step into reflective self-consciousness. Tony Hopkins’ extraordinary artistic project, to witness this art from the chalk-hills of England to the shaman caves of South Africa, and then paint the paintings himself, gives a uniquely sympathetic insight into this first flowering of the human imagination.” — Richard Mabey.

For over twenty years, British artist Tony Hopkins has traveled in pursuit of the globe’s most remarkable rock art sites. The result is one of the most intriguing books we’ve seen this year — Pecked and Painted: Rock Art, from Long Meg to Giant Wallaroo, a wonderfully rich volume full of the author’s photographs, field sketches, finished paintings, and extensive journal entries. Hopkins truly went far and wide in his rock art quest: Britain, Ireland, France, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan, Egypt, and the American Southwest. No two sites were the same, but as Tony Hopkins describes, something universal shone through:

“Whatever its meaning when the earth was young, rock art speaks to us now of a time when people lived their lives close to nature, in tune with the rhythm of the earth. It is no coincidence that most rock art is associated with what we think of today as wilderness areas, the far reaches of temporal and spiritual existence, wild landscapes where the past is still visible in the present, where what is most special has to do with the way we respond to nature.“

Hopkins’ words perfectly describe why the Land Library has built a 20 year collection of books devoted to prehistoric art. Starting with North America, and volumes such as these:

The Serpent and the Sacred Fire: Fertility Images in Southwest Rock Art by Dennis Slifer, Plains Indian Rock Art by James D. Keyser & Michael A. Klassen , Legacy on Stone: Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners Region by Sally J. Cole.

But before long, those universal themes mentioned above, led us to seek out volumes such as these:

Rock Art of the Dreamtime by Josephine Flood, The Hunter’s Vision: The Prehistoric Art of Zimbabwe by Peter Garlake, The Archaeology of Rock-Art edited by Christopher Chippindale and Paul Tacon.

along with Jean Clottes’ classic and comprehensive World Rock Art:

Stay tuned for our next post: German film director Werner Herzog and the birth of art in the Cave of Forgotten Dreams!

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