Pioneer Churches of Vancouver Island and the Salish Sea: An Explorer’s Guide by Liz Bryan Victoria: Heritage House, 2020 $24.95 / 9781772033052 * Here & Gone: Artwork of Vancouver & Beyond by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 $19.95 / 9781988242385 Both books reviewed by Martin Segger * Gazing out from our COVID-induced shut-ins…
Read more 1060 Watercolours & wooden churches
Toshiko by Michael Kluckner Vancouver: Midtown Press, 2020 (new and revised edition; first published 2015) $19.95 / 9780988110175 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * A graphic novel about the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians? Well, why not? After all, my earliest reading about the Japanese was in comic strips and the weekend newspapers. Terry and the…
Read more 1049 A wartime internment romance
My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques by Mary Fox Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2020 $44.95 / 97815501179385 Reviewed by Maria Tippett * Part I of Mary Fox’s lavishly illustrated My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques charts the artist’s career beginning with the hand-built figurative sculptures she fashioned out of found clay…
Read more 1042 A culture of coastal pottery
People Among the People: The Public Art of Susan Point by Robert D. Watt Vancouver: Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing in collaboration with UBC Museum of Anthropology, 2019 $50.00 / 9781773270425 * Susan Point: Spindle Whorl by Grant Arnold and Ian Thom (editors), with a foreword by Kathleen Bartels Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery and London: Black Dog Press,…
Read more 1039 Outward from Musqueam
Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene by Lilian Broca * Dear Mariam, Who would have imagined at the time we first met a few years ago that our newly formed relationship would be interrupted for several months due to a pandemic threatening the entire world? I certainly didn’t and I suspect nor…
Read more 1032 Letters from the Pandemic 23: Letter to Mary Magdalene
Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture, West & East: Christopher Tunnard, Sutemi Horiguchi by Marc Treib Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2020 $45.00 (US) / 9781943532780 Reviewed by Martin Segger * Thinking a Modern Landscape Architecture is a tale of two architects — or rather of two prominent books: Christopher Tunnard’s Gardens in the Modern Landscape (1948)…
Read more 1028 Christopher Tunnard’s gardens
The Rise of Real-Life Superheroes, and the Fall of Everything Else by Peter Nowak Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2020 $24.95 / 9781771622509 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Superheroes in Our Midst: Are we ready for some public-minded vigilante crime fighters? The slogan “Defund the Police” became popular in 2020 as thousands of people protested…
Read more 1025 Superheroes in our midst
ESSAY: Advanced Typography Workshops in Quarantine by Thomas Girard * In October 2020, Thomas Girard of the Graduate Liberal Studies programme at Simon Fraser University taught a course in Advanced Typography at a design school in Vancouver. Here, he provides a summary of that course with nods to the history — and ubiquity — of…
Read more Teaching typography in quarantine
Modern in the Making: Post-War Craft and Design in British Columbia by Daina Augaitis, Allan Collier, & Stephanie Rebick (editors) Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing and Vancouver Art Gallery, 2020 $40.00 / 9781773271224 Reviewed by Martin Segger * This substantial, fact-packed volume doubles as a reference authority and as an exhibition catalogue; the subject enthusiast must…
Read more 1002 Saving west coast Modernism
The Pocket Guide to The Unheralded Artists of BC Series; the Life and Art of Jack Akroyd, George Fertig, Mary Filer, Jack Hardman, Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, LeRoy Jenson, David Marshall, Frank Molnar, Arthur Pitts, Mildred Valley Thornton, Ina D.D. Uhthoff, Harry Webb, Jessie Webb by Mona Fertig (editor), with an introduction by Marsha Lederman Salt Spring…
Read more #986 Unsung artists find their voice
One Madder Woman by Dede Crane Calgary: Freehand Books, 2020 $23.95 / 9781988298689 Reviewed by Carole Gerson * France’s Impressionist artists are now so canonical that we often forget that their first exhibition of 1874, organized in protest against the conservatism of the Académie de Beaux Arts that vetted the annual displays of the Paris…
Read more #983 A studio of one’s own
The Bomb in the Wilderness: Photography and the Nuclear Era in Canada by John O’Brian Vancouver: UBC Press, 2020 $32.95 / 9780774863889 Reviewed by Ron Verzuh * Seeing past the mushroom cloud: A deeply passionate study of how photography has shaped our view of the Bomb. * Years ago on a visit to China, an…
Read more #976 Seeing past the mushroom cloud
The E.J. Hughes Book of Boats by Robert Amos Victoria: TouchWood Editions, 2020 $22.00 / 9781771513364 Reviewed by Brian Harvey * For the British Columbia painter E.J. Hughes, who died in Duncan in 2007, the sea was never far away. Hughes wasn’t the only famous Canadian artist to include boats in his canvases — we’ll…
Read more #966 A torrent of collective memory
Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $29.95 / 9781771622240 Reviewed by Molly Clarkson * I can’t help but chuckle as I read through the reader reviews on goodreads of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ Carpe Fin: A Haida Manga, two of which read: Exuberant art and a non-linear…
Read more #935 Haida cosmology transformed
Woo, The Monkey Who Inspired Emily Carr: A Biography by Grant Hayter-Menzies, with a foreword by Anita Kunz Madeira Park: Douglas & McIntyre, 2019 $9.99 / 9781771622141 Reviewed by Jessica Poon * What, ultimately, does a statue represent? A statue is allegory at its most literal. A statue can never be the very person it…
Read more #931 Carr, captivity, creativity
Everything is Relevant: Writings on Art and Life, 1991-2018 by Ken Lum, with an introduction by Kitty Scott Montreal: Concordia University Press, 2020 $64.95 / 9781988111001 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Where on earth is he? The Vancouver Art Gallery is staging an interview with Vancouver-born art star Ken Lum. It’s May 2020, deep into…
Read more #930 The relevance of Ken Lum
McIntyre House by Sherry McKay, with a preface by Douglas Coupland and photography by Michael Perlmutter Novato, California: ORO Editions, 2020, and Vancouver: UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture [SALA] / West Coast Modern House Series $24.95 (US) / 9781943532940 Reviewed by Martin Segger * As Leslie Van Duzer — series editor of UBC…
Read more #917 McIntyre’s West Coast Modern
Hand Drawn Vancouver: Sketches of the City’s Neighbourhoods, Buildings, and People by Emma Fitzgerald Toronto: Penguin Random House (Appetite), 2020 $24.95 / 9780147531209 Reviewed by Jennifer Chutter * Emma Fitzgerald’s Hand Drawn Vancouver weaves together her autobiographical accounts of growing up in Vancouver with visual depictions of personally meaningful places around the city. After spending…
Read more #905 Fresh and whimsical Vancouver
Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti: Tenth Anniversary Edition by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019 (first published 2009) $24.95 / 9781551527918 Reviewed by Margot Fedoruk * Whether you are a knitter, crocheter, or wanna be Banksy, the tenth anniversary edition of Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet…
Read more #904 Celebrating acts of yarnarchy
Craigdarroch: The Story of Dunsmuir Castle by Terry Reksten Victoria: Orca Books, 2019 (first published by Orca Books, 1987; reprinted 1994, 1997, and 2000) $16.95 / 9781459823846 Reviewed by Matthew Downey * This new printing of the late Terry Reksten’s Craigdarroch: The Story of Dunsmuir Castle provides to a new generation of readers a short…
Read more #873 A castle for all Victorians