Richly illustrated with colourful, quirky rag rugs (also known as hooked rugs), this delightful book examines Winifred Nicholson’s relationship with the Cumbrian craft, the way in which she helped revive the tradition in the 1960s and ’70s, and her influence on contemporary makers. For anyone interested in textiles, naive art, British folk traditions or mid-century craft, this book will be a treasure trove.British artist Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981) initially encountered rag rugs in Cumberland in the early 1920s, when, with her husband Ben Nicholson (1894–1982), she visited her neighbour Margaret Warwick, who was sat in her kitchen making a rug from scraps of old clothing. The Nicholsons were interested in ‘naive art’ at that time and had explored the work of Rousseau, as well as African sculpture, but this was the first time they had come face to face with naive art being made in their own country. In 1960 Winifred moved back to Banks Head, the old Cumbrian farmhouse she had owned since 1923. It was here that she helped to revive the local ‘hooky’ rag rug making tradition. Through Winifred’s efforts, well over a hundred new rugs were made. Notable makers included Mary Bewick, Janet Heap and Florence Williams. Winifred herself designed a number of rugs, and she also encouraged her grandchildren, who were paid a pound a time for a design.This beautiful book also presents a number of contemporary rag rug makers, with direct links to Winifred. Emma Tennant, who lives in Scotland not far from Winifred’s house, was inspired to start making rugs after seeing the ones in Winifred’s home. Also included are works by Winifred’s nieces Louisa Creed and the late Jenny Steinbugler. The author also discusses the extensive rag rug collection at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, which has interesting parallels with Winifred Nicholson’s approach to rug making, as well as the rug by Lucie Aldridge in the Fry Art Gallery, Essex.

The volcanoes on the Alaska Peninsula and the fifty-seven volcanoes that project into the Aleutian Islands form the northern rim of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Many are in Alaska’s national parks, monuments, and preserves. They continue to erupt, creating new Earth surfaces, and the deposits of lava, pumice, and ash ejected by these volcanoes create primeval ground: a true wilderness where few people on Earth other than volcanologists have traversed. Gary Freeburg has wandered and lived among Alaska’s volcanoes for regular periods during the last twenty years. The volcanoes he visits are alive and in some cases still steaming, and its lands are coarse and free of distraction: a vacuum of emptiness that embraces solitude and silence stirred only by the winds that blow and the rains that fall. The Earth surfaces that he walks are hard and largely barren of plant life, except where surfaces are shielded by the wind or are near water sources. There, new life returns in the form of lichen and tiny plants and insects and animals—bees, bear, fox, mayflies, and Alaskan hares—taking their rightful place in these vast, remote national parks, monuments, and preserves, reminding us that they are signs of hope that Earth will continue to evolve, regenerate, and renew itself long after we humans are gone.Freeburg’s writings, photographs, and drawings reflect what it is like to seek solitude and live among Alaska’s wild volcanoes. His travels were mostly solo treks in which he was flown in with supplies, a camera, sketchbooks, and journal to share his thoughts and artistically render his experiences. Each day spent in Alaska’s volcanic wilderness affirmed the importance of this place for the author and those who can only dream of such a place. His book seems to explain: How fortunate it is to have magical places and national parks like Alaska’s volcanoes, how fortunate we are to be alive on this magnificent Earth.

This book sheds new light on one of the most important artworks of the early Italian Renaissance, Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s fresco cycle of Good and Bad Government in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena. By connecting the images with the Hymn to Justice inscribed on the walls and highlighting Ambrogio’s ingenuity and personal approach to the subject the volume presents a fresh reading of its rich artistic message. In 1338 Ambrogio Lorenzetti painted three huge frescoes, known today as Good and Bad Government, on the walls of the Sala dei Nove, the Room of the Nine, in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, where the city’s nine executive magistrates presided over the destiny of this famous commune. The frescoes were meant to be strong visual reminders of the Nove’s duties and an admonishment of the nefarious effects of bad government. Boasting the largest artist’s signature of all time, the frescoes are testament to the extremely high esteem in which Ambrogio’s art was held by his fellow citizens. Nowadays Good and Bad Government has become one of the most widely reproduced works of the early Renaissance and is recognized for its many innovations, including the first European panorama of a cityscape and countryside. But what sort of visual journey was Ambrogio asking the Nove to make through this expanse? In pursuit of an elusive answer, the murals have become one of art’s great puzzles, challenging scholars and public alike. Scant attention, however, has been paid to the images themselves. They have been studied merely as symbols and allegories of abstract political concepts in which good and bad government are starkly juxtaposed. Despite his enormous signature, Ambrogio has been treated more as a servile illustrator than a creative artist, disregarding his highly personal approach to painting and the way his visual ingenuity, from composition to brushwork, shaped a far more complex and fascinating message. This book attempts finally to illuminate Ambrogio’s pictorial strategy by reading it in light of the Hymn to Justice inscribed upon the walls. The frescoes enrich the poet’s message, subtly changing and even subverting it. Instead of a pictorial lecture straightforwardly contrasting a utopia with a dystopia, Ambrogio blurs the binaries and invites the viewer to look beneath the idyllic surface of Sienese civic life.

At a time when division, polarization, and antagonisms pervade the United States, here is hope for the future. Landscapes of Hope shows how people from all walks of life and backgrounds can come together, talk and work out details, compromise, and do something special for generations to come: safeguarding 900,000 acres of spectacular wild country in Utah.Perched on the western edge of the Colorado Plateau, the Greater San Rafael Swell spans 8,000 square miles in south-central Utah and showcases a rich tapestry of landscapes. Its colorful geological strata span 350 million years of Earth’s history and contain a remarkably well-preserved fossil record from times when primitive marine species first emerged, to the era of dinosaurs and the appearance of large mammals. The region’s arid climate and isolation have also worked together to preserve cultural artifacts left by Indigenous peoples who occupied the area for more than ten millennia.As the treasures of the Greater San Rafael Swell became widely known during the 1960s, conservationists undertook campaigns to designate large tracts of public lands in the region as wilderness, where “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Initially, some residents of Emery County, located at the heart of the Greater Swell, strongly opposed these efforts, concerned that wilderness designations could limit ranching and mining, undermine residents' livelihoods, and sever their cultural ties to the lands.At first, reconciling these opposing views seemed impossible, but, starting in the late 1990s, Emery County leaders and residents engaged a wide spectrum of stakeholders in discussions spanning more than two decades. In 2019, their efforts to find common ground culminated in the passage of the John D. Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act. This comprehensive federal legislation designated substantial portions of public lands for multiple uses, while creating twenty-five new wilderness and other protected areas, safeguarding nearly 900,000 acres.Landscapes of Hope celebrates the commitment of those who take rightful pride in their legacy and who forged the legislation, conserving landscapes of extraordinary beauty and profound cultural importance. The fruits of their endeavors are portrayed in photographs and stories that showcase the sublime grandeur of the areas now protected in perpetuity.

‘Working with homeless people has totally changed me, turned me inside out and upside down. They’ve challenged my values, they’ve changed the way I see Irish society, they’ve changed the way I see God, they’ve done everything for me.’ - Fr Peter McVerryPublished to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Peter McVerry Trust, this book tells the story of the people behind it. The forty voices range from Paddy Fay, the first resident of Fr Peter McVerry’s Tabor House hostel in 1979, to other service providers, sponsors, fundraisers and board members. Published to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of Peter McVerry Trust, this book tells the story of the people behind it. The forty voices range from Paddy Fay, the first resident of Fr Peter McVerry’s Tabor House hostel in 1979, to other service providers, sponsors, fundraisers and board members. Media voices include: Miriam O’Callaghan, Linda Martin, Rick O’Shea, Matt Cooper, Claire Byrne and Ray D’Arcy.With photos spanning forty years, including from Peter and contributors, this book highlights the impact that Peter and the charity have made, especially as Ireland’s largest provider of Housing First services.

This stunning catalogue of 15th and 16thcentury Italian drawings from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will showcase highlights from this outstanding but still relatively little known part of the collection. It includes internationally significant sheets by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Pontormo, Pisanello, Giorgione and Tintoretto, as well as an important group of early Venetian drawings and a large number of workshop studies by Fra Bartolommeo. Published to accompany exhibitions at the Fondation Custodia, Paris, and The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, this volume will mark the conclusion of a five year cataloguing project at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, funded by the Getty Foundation. During the project all the Italian drawings were fully researched and catalogued, many for the first time. Several of these drawings have not been published in the last 70 years, if at all.The catalogue is a scholarly touchstone for this part of the collection. It includes two essays and 111 catalogue entries based on the online catalogue texts prepared by several Italian drawings specialists. They include the most well known drawings in Rotterdam as well as drawings that have never been published or exhibited before, such as newly attributed sheets by Pontormo, Federico Zuccaro and Aurelio Lomi.

"Affrilachia," a term first coined in 1991 by Kentucky poet Frank X Walker, refers to the cultural contributions of African Americans who live in Appalachia, a largely mountainous region stretching over thirteen states from Mississippi to New York. Although Black Americans have greatly influenced the popular culture landscape in this region, their stories, trials, and triumphs are often undocumented because Appalachia is perceived as wholly white.In this stunning visual history, photographer and curator Chris Aluka Berry gives voice to the broad spectrum of African Americans who have lived in the Appalachian region over the centuries. Berry, who spent six years in western North Carolina, northeast Georgia, and eastern Tennessee, immersed himself in the communities and lives of Black Appalachians to present the diversity and commonalities of the proud people in the region. His intimate and revealing photographs capture Arican Americans in various settings—churches, homes, revival services, family gatherings, and homegoing celebrations.Completing this comprehensive collection are powerful narratives from the people who inhabit these places, and contributions from Appalachian writers Kelly Navies and Maia Surdam, whose poignant and powerful poems and essays offer historical perspective and broaden the book's archival importance.The first book of its kind, Affrilachia: Testimonies is an inspired historical artifact that honors, represents, and celebrates the proud people of color whose history and existence has greatly contributed to the broad tapestry of Appalachia.

An Eastern Caribbean music festival as a window on social change/>/>Every year, on a weekend before Christmas, the small Caribbean island of Carriacou, Grenada, holds its annual Parang Festival, featuring concerts, performances of local quadrille dance, Hosannah band (a cappella singing) competitions, and the climactic string band competition. Born in the years leading up to Grenada's 1979 Socialist Revolution, the Parang Festival today offers a vehicle for Carriacouans to articulate and assert a progressive understanding of local cultural identity as well as a regional, pan-Caribbean belonging. Rebecca S. Miller examines the varying impact that factors such as cultural ambivalence, globalization, and technology have had on the performance of Carriacou's folk and traditional music and dance forms. Using archival sources and current ethnography, she illuminates the enduring significance of the Parang Festival to illustrate the social and political history of Carriacou as well as this culture's contemporary process of modernization. The book includes a web link allowing the reader to listen to a variety of musical examples.

The role of performing art in one of the world's most diverse and complex societies/>/>This book is the first comprehensive overview of Javanese performing arts from their origins to their dynamic present. Renowned scholar and musician Sumarsam draws from a lifetime of immersion in both wayang and gamelan to guide readers through the concept of the "in-between," revealing how the interplay of dualisms—myth and history, sacred and secular, personal and cultural—forms the bedrock of Javanese performance. Rigorously researched historical case studies reveal the intricate relationship between histories and mythologies in Java. Wayang, accompanied by gamelan, is a multimedia performance imbued with rich historical, aesthetic, religious, and emotional associations. Sumarsam delves into this intricate, profound, and ever-evolving art form, exploring its diverse manifestations and venues, from courtly village entertainment-cum-ritual to palace-based aesthetic expressions of cultural proficiency; from coastal mercantile entrepots to the verdant wet rice terraces of Java; from colonial plantation and textile factory cultures to communities centered around contemporary industrial estates and creative economy initiatives. An essential resource for scholars, musicians, and enthusiasts of wayang and gamelan, The In-Between in Javanese Performing Arts offers an unparalleled immersion into the heart of traditional Javanese performing arts, revealing their profound impact on Javanese culture, identity, and artistic expression.

Herry Perry (1897-1962) is an important, but neglected, artist of the 1920s-50s. The book brings together all aspects of her art for the first time. She studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central Saint Martins) from 1924-7 and was taught wood engraving there by Noel Rooke. Her first love was wood engraving but she quickly moved on to use the wide range of other skills she acquired at the Central. Her best known work is the posters she designed for Frank Pick at London Transport from 1927-38. She produced some sixty witty and inventive posters during this time. Some of these included birds-eye view maps of areas of London. She was also commissioned to paint murals, most famously two on R.M.S. Queen Mary in 1936, and also a map mural for Rothamsted Research Station in 1932 (which can still be seen there). She also illustrated various books, some of which were written by her. The text and illustrations often show her sense of humour. The Second World War and the death of Frank Pick in 1941 put an end to her poster work. After the War she painted a large number of pub signs for various London and Kent breweries.

This beautiful volume accompanies a major exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery that will reunite for the first time in 120 years an extraordinary group of Claude Monet’s Impressionist paintings of London. The exhibition will realise the artist’s unfulfilled ambition of showing the group on the banks of the Thames, just a stone’s throw away from where many of them were created.Claude Monet (1840–1926) is world renowned as the leading figure of French Impressionism, the movement that changed the course of modern art. Less known is the fact that some of Monet’s most remarkable Impressionist paintings were made not in France but in London. They depict extraordinary views of the Thames as it had never been seen before, full of evocative atmospheres, mysterious light and radiant colours. Begun over three stays in the capital between 1899 and 1901, the series – depicting Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament – was unveiled at a landmark exhibition in Paris in 1904. Monet fervently wanted to show them in London the following year, 1905, but plans fell through. To this day, they have never been the subject of an exhibition in the UK.Monet and London: Views of the Thames will realise Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of showing this extraordinary group of paintings in London, on the banks of the Thames and a mere 300 metres from the Savoy Hotel where most were painted. By presenting the paintings Monet himself selected for his public in Paris and London, it will provide visitors with the unique experience of seeing the show Monet curated and the works he felt best represented his ambitious artistic enterprise – brought together for the first time over a century after their inaugural exhibition.The accompanying catalogue is richly illustrated and includes 21 entries and four original essays that shed new light on this famous series.

American artist Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is best known for his landmark text-based paintings, which draw on the influential writings and speeches of twentieth-century historical and cultural figures including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston and Gertrude Stein. This catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in which Ligon’s art will be displayed in dialogue with objects from the Fitzwilliam and Trinity College collections selected by the artist himself. Glenn Ligon is widely considered one of the most important figures in the contemporary art world. Informed by his experiences as an African American living in New York, his art is a sustained meditation on issues of interpretation through translation and quotation, the role of the past in the present, and the representation of the self in relation to culture and history, both as the conceptual underpinning and as a critique of modern society. His text-based paintings, made since the late 1980s, engage provocatively and incisively with the written and oral legacy of writers and cultural icons, from Ralph Ellison to Richard Pryor, highlighting the social, linguistic and political constructions of race, gender and sexuality. The catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, while also serving as an introduction to the artist’s oeuvre. A large-scale neon, Waiting for the Barbarians (2021), will be installed in the museum’s grade-I listed portico and two dedicated galleries will be linked by interventions threaded throughout the museum’s permanent collection, in which the artist has been invited to select artworks and objects following themes including annotation, cultural hybridity and legibility. By exploring Ligon’s curatorial practice alongside his artworks, the exhibition showcases the ideas of one of the most significant Black artists working today in direct dialogue with museological tradition. Issues such as art making and aesthetics, as well as broader questions about race and its socio-political implications, will be further developed in the catalogue, which includes a series of essays and conversations between Ligon and a range of museum curators.

For more than six decades John Faulkner has been at the heart of British and Irish music-making, as a singer, songwriter, composer, musician, producer and film-maker. Storm in My Heart is John’s highly personal account of his life in music, from his childhood in wartime London, through his years in the English folk explosion and on to life in Ireland as a significant player in the traditional music scene. In a lifetime’s journey John falls under the influence of Ewan McColl and Peggy Seeger, marries tempestuous singer Dolores Keane, and moves to County Galway where he brings his words and music to the world. He has an international number one success with ‘Lion in a Cage’, his campaigning tribute to the imprisoned Nelson Mandela, whom he subsequently meets. In this honest and witty memoir John recalls his work with Frankie Gavin, Alec Finn, John Prine and others, revealing the dark arts of the Irish music business while revelling in the freewheeling delights of a life devoted to performing. Storm in My Heart is a clear-eyed chronicle by one of Ireland’s finest artists.Storm in My Heart includes QR codes to a curated selection of John Faulkner’s best loved music.

This vibrant catalogue showcases a decade’s work by Memphis-based Peruvian-American photographer Andrea Morales (b. 1984), whose camera sympatheticallydelves into community life and activism in the American South. It accompanies herfirst major exhibition at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, represents the firstscholarly publication on her work, and the first major museum exhibition dedicatedto movement journalism. The unofficial capital of the Mississippi Delta, Memphis, Tennessee, has long been aplace bubbling with activism and social movements. Roll Down Like Water – a nod to Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic last speech in the city in support of the 1968 SanitationWorkers’ Strike – shows Andrea Morales’s incredible ability to engage with her subjects,in Memphis and the surrounding region, through the lens. From intimate portraits andrecords of daily life to the documentation of social and environmental movements withlocal and national resonance, her photography builds a passionate and tender portrait ofthis unique part of the American South.The energy vibrating through Morales’s stills is the energy of the people themselves:the artist centres her practice on building long-term relationships with the communitiesshe photographs, and views this relationship as one of collaboration rather thandetached observation. Her approach is informed by ‘movement journalism’, whichrecognizes that journalism, like the camera, is not totally objective: behind laptops andlenses are people, institutions and systems that hold and wield power, for good or ill.By establishing a human connection between chronicler and people and rooting it inan ethical and rigorous framework, Morales’s ‘community-driven visual storytelling’reaches beyond historical injustice to capture the liveliness and joy of the communitiesshe photographs.For Memphis, and Morales, King’s words loom large. Echoing his descriptionof collective liberation as ‘an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a singlegarment of destiny’, Morales’s captivating images of the American South inmoments of turbulence, stillness, darkness and beauty chart new, sustainable pathsin photojournalism, while reflecting upon identity, community and the power ofstorytelling.

This catalogue invites readers to dive deeper into the captivating dialogue between materiality and imagination, as envisioned by IRTH إرث at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Prepared for the Biennale Architettura 2023, for which the theme was ‘The Laboratory of the Future’, the catalogue of IRTH إرث immerses visitors into the profound interplay between material and immaterial. It chronicles the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia’s multi-faceted contribution to the discussion, in which the essence of earth as a material becomes a canvas for envisioning tomorrow’s architectural legacies. In a curatorial journey told through essays from visionary architects, researchers and experimental material alchemists, the catalogue represents the multiple viewpoints and projects emerging from Saudi Arabia and its wider region. It delves into vernacular Saudi architecture, which, meticulously deconstructed and reimagined, forms the key point of reference for this journey. As we navigate the universal challenges of belonging and legacy, this exhibition transcends geographical boundaries, seeking common ground in the tapestry of diverse identities and perspectives. Through the lens of materiality, the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia compels us to answer collectively the problems of tomorrow, one narrative at a time. Notable topics: The Exploration of Immateriality in Architecture; Examining Experimental Materials for Future-proofed Built Environments; Understanding Vernacular Architecture and Modernization in Saudi Arabia.

The Long Ride Home: Black Cowboys in America is the first book to tell the story of the Black cowboy experience in contemporary America. Although Black cowboys have been a fixture on the American landscape and frontier since the nineteenth century, few people are aware of their enduring contributions to the history of the West and how their unique culture continues to thrive today in urban as well as rural areas all over the country.The book features Ron Tarver’s beautiful, compelling, and often surprising contemporary images of African-American cowboys that not only convey the Black cowboy’s way of life and its rich heritage, but also affirm a thriving culture of Black-owned ranches and rodeo operations, parades, inner-city cowboys, retired cowhands, and Black cowgirls of all ages, too. Tarver, who grew up in a family of Black cowboys in Oklahoma, uses his artistry to question, if not upend, long-held notions of what it means to be a cowboy and, with that, what it means to be an American.The Long Ride Home couldn’t be more timely, coming on the heels of films such as Lil Nas X’s hit time-travel western, Old Town Road (2019), and Idris Elba’s Concrete Cowboy (2021), which was based on Greg Neri’s Ghetto Cowboy (2013), about Philadelphia’s contemporary African-American cowboy culture. Many of Tarver’s images were made in some of the same Philadelphia neighborhoods. Widespread interest in the Black experience in America will also make this book an especially important contribution to Black history.In addition to Tarver’s photographs, The Long Ride Home includes an essay by Art T. Burton, an expert on the history of Black cowboys. This book is both a tribute to and celebration of the Black cowboy in America. It is certain to be an invaluable addition to American history for years to come.