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What Does It Take to Create an Artist or Two?

20/2/2019

Alberto Giacometti was one of the most iconic sculptors of the last century. His brother Diego, one year younger, who loved nature and had a wild spirit, was there by his side. They were sons of a Swiss painter, so they were both introduced to art from birth. Two Brothers, Four Hands: The Artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti, a picture book biography by iNK author Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan, lavishly illustrated by Hadley Hooper, shows how these brothers tackled life and art as a team and left the world an extraordinary body of work.

Becoming an artist requires a lot of study and experimentation and, yes, failure. Alberto is influenced in Paris by his surrealist artist friends who believe art should express imagination, not reality. Alberto tries it for a while, as Diego starts doing carpentry. World War II intervenes. A discouraged Alberto goes home to Switzerland while Diego toughs out the war in Paris guarding their studio. Upon Alberto's return to Paris after the war and the arrival of his soon-to-be wife Annette, Alberto starts sculpting something never before seen.

"Alberto's skeletal, lonely figures are survivors. They rise up courageously from these ruins of war. People are moved by the truth in Alberto's sculptures. They express a new spirit in art."

But Alberto does not create these sculptures alone. "Diego fashions thin constructions of wire to support the willowy figures. He builds bases to balance them on their outsized feet......His hand touches every sculpture." Fame and fortune come to Alberto but he dies too soon.

Yet Diego carries on alone: "As if his hands decide for him, he starts making more objects, furniture so magical that one sees sculpture and forgets its function."

Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan have crafted a poetic story as true and lean as a Giacometti sculpture. At the back of the book is a photo of Alberto's famous "Walking Man" with suggestions about how to look at it and what can be seen. What can't be seen in Two Brothers, Four Hands: The Artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti, but can be felt throughout, is the love and devotion between two brothers and the authors' and illustrator's love and respect for their legacy.

Publication date: April 23, 2019

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Yet Another Case of a Dog Coming to the Rescue

13/2/2019

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A few years ago, I was at the top of the Union Creek chair lift on Copper Mountain in Colorado where I saw two dogs, heads lowered, running up and down the steep hill facing the the top of the lift. Dogs are a rarity on ski mountains. They got my attention. Suddenly one of them stopped, barked, and started digging. Slowly a skier emerged, smiling, from the hole in the snow. It was a training session for avalanche dogs. The happiness of the dog was also evident. The buried human had been discovered within minutes of the trainers releasing the dogs with the command, "Search!"

Here is yet another example of dogs that can rescue us, this time from the disaster of collapsing and moving mountain snow-- the avalanche. How do dogs learn to find and save lives in record times after such an event? iNK author, Elizabeth Rusch, describes the process in Avalanche Dog Heroes: Piper and Friends Learn to Search the Snow. It's no walk in the park and not every dog has what it takes. As Rusch describes them:

"Avalanche rescue dogs must be smart, agile, athletic, and eager to please. They need thick pads on their paws and dense hair to protect them from the cold. It also helps if they are small and light enough to be carried."

Dogs already live in a world of smell-- they have a finely tuned sense that can detect the source of a smell. After weeks of bonding with a handler, becoming acclimatized to ski lifts, skiers and all kinds of weather, they learn to respond to more than 80 cues that are printed on the front end paper of this book.

Elizabeth Rusch introduces us to Piper, a three-year-old border collie, who enters the training program or "school" with Sara, her handler, who will prepare Piper for a for a final examination. It shows readers that a high bar that must be set for avalanche rescue dogs if it will be able do its job when it counts. By the time we get to Piper's certification test, the reader is totally hooked. Piper will have to find two people and two of three scented sweaters buried in a snow field in about 15 minutes. Will she succeed? Game on!

I'm always looking for the added value a book has for students. In this case, Rusch has provided many suggestions for group discussions and independent activities at the back of the book.

I also loved this book because I'm a skier. The brilliant photography in the book by Dylan Cembalski brought back so many memories. Avalanches are a real and present danger. (I've never been involved in one, although I've been at ski resorts when they've happened. ) Avalanche Dog Heroes is a different take on the pleasures and dangers of this exhilarating sport. Thank you, Elizabeth Rusch, for this excellent story about four-legged ski patrollers who can unbury lives.

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The Dead Do Tell Tales

8/2/2019

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"Memento mori" is a Latin phrase to remind us that we all must die. Mummies are people who died and somehow escaped the degradation of the grave with their bodies still more or less intact, even after several thousand years! iNK Think Tank's author, Kerrie Logan Hollihan's upcoming book (May 7, 2019) Mummies Exposed: Creepy and True, more than lives up to its title. The photographs in this book are definitely ready for their close up. Hollihan's writing prepares the reader to stomach the images.

I learned from this book that there are all kinds of mummies-- accidental mummies- preserved by their dry and/or frozen environment, planned mummies-preserved by special treatment after death, and sacrificial children-- left alive, "high and dry" to die as an honor to the Incan sun god, Inti. Yes, a lot of this book is grisly but I found myself laughing at loud at Hollihan's light touch of humor throughout this fascinating treatment of the lives they had led and then died so that we can flesh out their story.

How do we know about them? Through the work of "shovel-happy archaeologists." The death of a frozen mummy called the "Italian Ice man" was a mystery. What happened to him? To this day "...researchers are still hot on the info trail. 'Freezing to death is quite likely the main case of death in this classic cold case.'" Modern forensic science, CT scans, DNA analysis, pathology analysis may be used to determine what diseases they had lived with and died from, what they ate, and how to continue to protect their remains from bacteria that work on the usual buried corpse. As Hollihan puts it, "The mummies were studied to death." and many of them ended up in museums.

In the case of one crypt in Hungary, uncovered by a church's renovation in 1994, Hollihan writes: "Mother Nature had done her thing with air and something else.... The something else was pinesap, sticky and acidic that had seeped from the pine boards. The undertakers had also sprinkled pine shavings inside the coffins to absorb liquid leaking from the corpses as they decomposed. With acid to kill the bacteria and bugs, and plenty of air flowing by, the bodies had dried out. Easy queasy."

Kerrie Hollihan has done her homework in bringing to life these tales of death. Interspersed in discussions of various mummies are "Factlet" pages that add additional pertinent information such as a discussion of contemporary people who choose to be frozen in liquid nitrogen upon death so that they might be revitalized by science some time in the future-- called the "Freeze, Wait, Reanimate" club. But my most important take-away from this book is the humanity of people throughout the ages and how much we can learn from their bodies, their clothing, their art, their tools and the way their survivors and nature preserved them so they can inform us of their ancient civilizations. Mummies are amazing time capsules of the human story.

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What Does It Take to Create an Artist or Two?

Yet Another Case of a Dog Coming to the Rescue

The Dead Do Tell Tales

Vicki Cobb

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What Does It Take to Create an Artist or Two?

Yet Another Case of a Dog Coming to the Rescue

The Dead Do Tell Tales

Vicki Cobb

​Archives

Categories

Links

Company

Contact

Archives