If you were curious about the creation of Sunkoo Yuh's piece Repatriations, on view for Contemporary Clay 2021, here is part of a talk he gave in 2020 which talks about the creation of this piece and includes images of the creation and firing processes.
Sloppy Craft by 
Cast: art and objects, made using humanity's most transformational process by 
Mastering Hand Building by 
Masters: earthenware: major works by leading artists by 
Masters: Porcelain: Major Works by Leading Ceramists by 
500 Ceramic Sculptures by 
500 Figures in Clay by Beth Lo
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by
For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.
The Arcanum by
An extraordinary episode in cultural & scientific history comes to life in the fascinating story of a genius, greed, & exquisite beauty revealed by the obsessive pursuit of the secret formula for one of the most precious commodities of eighteenth century European royalty-fine porcelain.
Eliza Au
The Sense of Order by
The Sense of Orderprovides a comprehensive survey of the rich history and theory of decorative art. The universal human impulse to seek order and rhythm in space and time can be seen in an astonishing range of human activities: children's play, poetry, dance, music and architecture, as well as art. Its persistent prevalence in our every activity calls for a rigorous explanation of this fascinating phenomenon in terms of our biological heritage. Professor Gombrich in this tome, which he himself regarded as his most original work, offers precisely this. His characteristic erudition and expertise signify his writings here as no less than revolutionary in our perception of art and, in turn, of our very selves. A pleasure to read, this pivotal book is as accessible as it is sophisticated, and as engaging as it is idiosyncratic.
The Grammar of Ornament by
A complete and unabridged full-color edition of the classic sourcebook on ornamental design First published in 1856, The Grammar of Ornament remains a design classic. Its inspiration came from pioneering British architect and designer Owen Jones (1809-1874), who produced a comprehensive design treatise for the machine age, lavishly illustrated in vivid chromolithographic color. Jones made detailed observations of decorative arts on his travels in Europe, the Middle East, and in his native London, where he studied objects on display at the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851 and at local museums. His aim was to improve the quality of Western design by changing the habits of Victorian designers, who indiscriminately mixed elements from a wide variety of sources. Jones's resulting study is a comprehensive analysis of styles of ornamental design, presenting key examples ranging from Maori tattoos, Egyptian columns, and Greek borders to Byzantine mosaic, Indian embroidery, and Elizabethan carvings. At once splendidly Victorian and insistently modern, The Grammar of Ornament celebrates objects of beauty from across time periods and continents, and remains an indispensable sourcebook today.
Structure and Form in Design by
The complexities of two-dimensional phenomena are explained and illustrated in detail, while various three-dimensional forms are also discussed. In the context of the decorative arts and design, structure is the underlying framework, and forms the resultant, visible, outcome of the creative process. Whether hidden or visually detectable in the final design, structure invariably determines whether or not a design is successful in terms of both its aesthetics and its practical performance.
Symbol, Pattern and Symmetry by
The book features illustrative examples of symbol and pattern from a wide range of historical and cultural contexts, from Byzantine, Persian and Assyrian design, to case studies of Japanese and Chinese patterns. Looking at each culture's specific craft style, Hann shows how the visual arts are underpinned with a strict geometric structure, and argues that understanding these underlying structures enables us to classify and compare data from across cultures and historical periods.
Arabic Geometrical Pattern and Design by
Nearly 200 examples exhibit the wide range of Islamic art, including hexagon and octagon designs, combinations of stars and rosettes, and many variations on other geometric patterns. Twenty-eight examples from traditional sources in Cairo and Damascus include sanctuary doors, openwork windows, and inlaid marble pavements and ceilings.
Islamic Geometric Patterns by
The marvels of Islamic patterns--the most recognizable visual expression of Islamic art and architecture--are not just a beautiful accident. The ancient practitioners of this craft used traditional methods of measurement to create dazzling geometric compositions, often based on the repetition of a single pattern. The results are magnificent in their beauty and awe-inspiring in their execution. Now, with the aid of this book, everyone can learn how to master this ancient art and create their own intricate patterns or re-create classic examples. All that is needed is a pencil, a ruler, a compass, and a steady hand.
Linda Sikora
The Argonauts by
An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family, Maggie Nelson'sThe Argonautsis a genre-bending memoir, a work of "autotheory" offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. An insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry for this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.
Touching Feeling by
A pioneer in queer theory and literary studies, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick brings together for the first time in Touching Feeling her most powerful explorations of emotion and expression. In essays that show how her groundbreaking work in queer theory has developed into a deep interest in affect, Sedgwick offers what she calls "tools and techniques for nondualistic thought," in the process touching and transforming such theoretical discourses as psychoanalysis, speech-act theory, Western Buddhism, and the Foucauldian "hermeneutics of suspicion." In prose sometimes somber, often high-spirited, and always accessible and moving, Touching Feeling interrogates--through virtuoso readings of works by Henry James, J. L. Austin, Judith Butler, the psychologist Silvan Tomkins and others--emotion in many forms.
Vibrant Matter by
In Vibrant Matter the political theorist Jane Bennett, renowned for her work on nature, ethics, and affect, shifts her focus from the human experience of things to things themselves. Bennett argues that political theory needs to do a better job of recognizing the active participation of nonhuman forces in events. Toward that end, she theorizes a "vital materiality" that runs through and across bodies, both human and nonhuman. Bennett explores how political analyses of public events might change were we to acknowledge that agency always emerges as the effect of ad hoc configurations of human and nonhuman forces. She suggests that recognizing that agency is distributed this way, and is not solely the province of humans, might spur the cultivation of a more responsible, ecologically sound politics: a politics less devoted to blaming and condemning individuals than to discerning the web of forces affecting situations and events. Bennett examines the political and theoretical implications of vital materialism through extended discussions of commonplace things and physical phenomena including stem cells, fish oils, electricity, metal, and trash.
Natalia Arbelaez
One Hundred Years of Solitude by
One of the most influential literary works of our time, One Hundred Years of Solitude remains a dazzling and original achievement by the masterful Gabriel Garcia Marquez, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women--brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul--this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction.
Jennifer Ling Datchuk
Minor Feelings by
Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative--and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.
We Gon' Be Alright by
In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can't Stop Won't Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism,We Gon' Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of "diversity," the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing.
Ornamentalism by
This book alters the foundational terms of racialized femininity by allowing us to conceptualize race and gender without being solely beholden to flesh or skin. Tracing a direct link between the making of Asiatic femininity and a technological history of synthetic personhood in the West from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, Ornamentalism demonstrates how the construction of modern personhood in themultiple realms of law, culture, and art has been surprisingly indebted to this very marginal figure and places Asian femininity at the center of an entire epistemology of race.
The Managed Hand by
This study looks closely for the first time at these intimate encounters, focusing on New York City, where such nail salons have become ubiquitous. Drawing from rich and compelling interviews, Miliann Kang takes us inside the nail industry, asking such questions as: Why have nail salons become so popular? Why do so many Asian women, and Korean women in particular, provide these services? Kang discovers multiple motivations for the manicure-from the pampering of white middle class women to the artistic self-expression of working class African American women to the mass consumption of body-related services.
Kyle & Kelly Phelps
Linda Swanson
Promethean Ambitions by
In Promethean Ambitions, William R. Newman uses alchemy as a means to discuss the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial. The historical relationship that he charts here between human creation and nature has innumerable implications today.
Timefulness by
Marcia Bjornerud shows how geologists chart the planet’s past, explaining how we can determine the pace of solid Earth processes such as mountain building and erosion and comparing them with the more unstable rhythms of the oceans and atmosphere. These overlapping rates of change in the Earth system―some fast, some slow―demand a poly-temporal worldview, one that Bjornerud calls “timefulness.” She explains why timefulness is vital in the Anthropocene, this human epoch of accelerating planetary change, and proposes sensible solutions for building a more time-literate society.
This compelling book presents a new way of thinking about our place in time, enabling us to make decisions on multigenerational timescales. The lifespan of Earth may seem unfathomable compared to the brevity of human existence, but this view of time denies our deep roots in Earth’s history―and the magnitude of our effects on the planet.
The Forge and the Crucible by
Primitive man's discovery of the ability to change matter from one state to another brought about a profound change in spiritual behavior. Mircea Eliade follows the ritualistic adventures of these ancient societies, adventures rooted in the people's awareness of an awesome new power.
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