Artists of Utah

Customer Reviews:

Not What I Expected.......2001-08-30

Granted, I was fooled. I had hoped this book would be a collection of Utah produced fine art. Instead it is mostly a listing of Utah's artists, interspersed with a disappointingly small number of examples of their work. The major figures in Utah art do get larger bios (at least some of them), but many of the "bios" are little more than one sentence long. Apparently, every kid who ever scribbed on his schooldesk is included here, too.

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Poetry at its best
An amazing read

On Desert Trails With Everett Ruess

Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0879058250

Book Description

9X12 In, 96 Pp, 45 Black & White Illustrations We Are Proud To Introduce This Handsome Commemorative Edition of On Desert Trails With Everett Ruess (First Introduced In Our 60, 000 Copy A Vagabond For Beauty), Which Was Originally Published In 1940 and Has Since Become A Collector's Item. The Poetry, Letters, and Artwork Contained In This Book Reveal The Adventurous Young Artist Who Loved The Arid Wilderness and Disappeared Into The Desert of Southern Utah. To The Original Book We Have Added Many Photographs of Ruess On The Trail, Along With Others Taken By Ruess of The Land That So Inspired Him. A Special Appenidx Tells The Salt Lake Tribune's Account of Its 1935 Expedition To Southern Utah In Search of Everett Ruess.

Customer Reviews:

Poetry at its best.......2005-02-03

Everett Ruess is a marvelously gifted poet. He writes in elegant lines teeming with passionate imagery. "Wilderness Song" is the most incredible piece and describes nature at its fullest. Any poet can write beautiful lines, but Ruess writes with soul, the soul of an aficianado of the wilderness.

An amazing read.......2004-06-23

A chilling voice out of the past from one who loved wilderness so much he vanished without a trace in it. I am hard pressed to come up with a book or person who was able to articulate the beauty around him more than Everett Ruess. In a tragic twist this lover of the purity nature gave and continues to give a painter's perspective in words to the American west despite the mysterious circumstances surrounding his disappearance. He left behind not only the beautiful writings of a master (and at such a young age) but also a mysterious tale of intrigue that leaves people guessing to this very day. Was he a victim of murder or did his love for wilderness drive him into the vast unknown to live out his days in the peaceful tranquility only nature can provide? Buy the book and formulate your own opinions. I highly recommend it.

The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition)

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Death of a Canyon
Historically valuable, photographically bland
A visual rhapsody
A heartbreakingly beautiful book
Oversized Paperback Rivals Original Sierra Club Hardback

The Place No One Knew: Glen Canyon on the Colorado (25th Anniversary Commemorative Edition)
Eliot Porter , and David Ross Brower
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 087905249X

Book Description

Glen Canyon, now Lake Powell, is rediscovered through wonderful color images by Eliott Porter.

Customer Reviews:

Death of a Canyon.......2007-06-10

This not a book about photography and should not be purchased just for the "pictures". It is literally a memorial to the death of Glen Canyon. It is a reminder of our obligation to stay informed.

Glen Canyon Dam should never have been built and would never be built today. The American people would never stand for it. Ironically and sadly, it was the loss of Glen Canyon that inspired many to say, "Never again." When the Bureau of Reclamation attempted to follow Glen Canyon Dam with a series of dams down stream in the Grand Canyon, the agency met a solid wall of opposition. In ways, the river still flows free through the Grand Canyon because of the sacrifice that was made with Glen Canyon.

Even former staunch proponents of Glen Canyon Dam lived to regret their support. As late as 1974, Senator Barry Goldwater still felt the dam was an improvement over the untamed river. But by the mid-80s, he felt otherwise. In one interview, in fact, Goldwater lamented that if he could change just one Senate vote he'd cast in 30 years, it would have been his vote to approve construction of Glen Canyon Dam.

Sad.

Historically valuable, photographically bland.......2005-09-30

"The Place No One Knew" is the famous book that comes up anytime someone mentions the submersion of Glen Canyon. It was the Sierra Club's--and the environmental movement in general's--first major statement on the construction of Glen Canyon Dam, the flooding of Glen Canyon, and the filling of Lake Powell.
The book is a companion, or I should say the polar opposite, of "Lake Powell: Jewel of the Colorado," a book by Floyd Dominy, then Commisioner of the dam-building Bureau of Reclamation.
Both books are basically propaganda, though for seperate sides of the same issue; both feature scenic photos of a place, praising text, and pertinent quotes.
Glen Canyon was referred as to "the place no one knew" because its lack of national park status (and protection) was a major factor in its being inundated by the trapped water of the Colorado River. In actuality, a lot of people knew it--just not many with the Sierra Club. In fact, more people rafted through Glen Canyon a year than did through the Grand Canyon. C. Gregory Crampton wrote ten books about Glen Canyon before its demise, and liked to joke that THIS book should have been called "The Place the Sierra Club Didn't Know."
Which would have been more correct.
All that said, this book is a valuable historical document--for its role in the Glen Canyon controversy, and for its role in this century's environmental movement.
But it's not that good of a book. The photos are below average: many have a grainy, low quality-feel to them, and most of them are of very small things, and fail to give the true scope and grandeur of what Glen Canyon was. They are not Eliot Porter's best work, and some of the photos aren't even of Glen Canyon, but of other red rock from other places in Utah. (That's true, believe it or not, and it's well-documented.)
The quotes that accompany the photos are all right, but they're not amazing, they won't make you jump up.
A far, far better book featuring photos of Glen Canyon is Eleanor Inskip's "The Colorado River Through Glen Canyon: Before Lake Powell." Check it out.
And a far, far better collection of Eiliot Porter's is "Eliot Porter's Southwest." It's full of gorgeous black and white images from all over the Interior West.

A visual rhapsody.......2003-06-06

I got a copy of Eliot Porter's Glen Canyon book after reading Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire," a chapter of which is devoted to a downriver rafting trip along this stretch of the Colorado River just before the dam was built. While Abbey's descriptions are vivid, I wanted to see with my own eyes what he was describing. And Porter's camera is the closest you can get to doing that today.

His pictures are, of course, not the real thing, but they are about as breathtaking as photography can be. The colors, textures, reflections, and the play of light and shadow are wonderful, and each photograph is distinctly different. His own description of the canyon's display of color and light in the introductory essay "The Living Canyon" give an instructive insight into the eye of the photographer. His awareness of what he is looking at and his ways of choosing to look help the reader to see even more in the 80 photographs that follow.

While some of the photographs capture the monumental scale of the canyon walls and formations, many focus on the myriad surfaces that are revealed to the eye: erosion patterns, lichen, rippling water flow, the dark streaking mineral stains extending from seeps, the rough texture of weathered sandstone in glancing sunlight, smooth river stones, the layered stripes of exposed sediment, the trickling spread of water falling from overhead springs, the hanging tapestry coloration of the walls, whorled and striated rock, dry sand. There are also photographs of plants: moonflower, maidenhair fern, willow, tamarisk, redbud, columbine, cane. Above all, there is the rich array of colors, capturing a great variety of moods and attitudes.

Porter was recognized for his photography of birds, and while there are no birds visible in these photographs, his introductory essay makes mention of them, and when looked at with that awareness, many of the pictures also seem to capture a sense of "air space" for flight. Before turning to photography, Porter was a Harvard professor of biochemistry and bacteriology, and it's interesting to see the somewhat dispassionate eye of the scientist in the way he uses the camera. While the story of Glen Canyon may induce sorrow or anger, the photographs are strong for their lack of sentimentality.

The pictures also excite a curiosity about the geology of the river, and the book concludes with a short essay describing how the canyon walls reveal the geological ages that have gone into forming this part of the earth, going back millions of years. The book also includes a catalog of all the plants and animals that inhabited Glen Canyon before its inundation. Altogether, with its quotes from other writers, including Loren Eiseley, Joseph Wood Krutch, Wallace Stegner, and members of John Wesley Powell's expedition in the 19th century, this book is a fitting record of a great lost national treasure.

A heartbreakingly beautiful book.......2002-11-13

These photographs are just about all that is left of Glen Canyon. After the Sierra Club and other environmentalists had lost the battle to prevent the Glen Canyon River Dam from being built, Eliot Porter took this extraordinary series of photographs to memorialize the gorgeous area that has been lost forever. Few people at the time knew much about the Canyon. It was too remote, too difficult to get to. Although it was one of the areas that John Wesley Powell found most beautiful in his first expedition down the Green and Colorado Rivers, no access roads or paths were ever built to make it possible for many people to view the areas firsthand. As a result, very few people knew precisely what we were about to lose.

The tragedy is that these areas are really, truly are gone. Even if the Glen Canyon River Dam were magically removed, many of the areas viewed in these gorgeous photographs have already been silted up. The Green and Colorado Rivers carry extreme quantities of minerals, and when the dam stops the flow to form a reservoir, they tend to drop to the bottom. All dams have a limited life. They don't last for as long as one might imagine. Basically, they create a new landmass behind them over the course of a century or so. Many of the spots photographed in these pictures are now solid earth.

One would hope that such beautiful photographs as these, photos that create tremendous longing for what we have already lost, would make us more concerned to preserve what is left. But with the current presidency even today as I write this review opening the national parks to snowmobiles and with people speculating that there will be new attempts to open arctic areas in Alaska to oil exploration, we can't assume that in the least. These photographs may end up being emblematic of all endangered areas, of the ongoing fragility of all of nature.

Oversized Paperback Rivals Original Sierra Club Hardback.......2000-08-13

I was expecting a reprint similar to the small-sized Ballantine issue of the late 1960s. I was surprised to receive a book almost as large as the original Sierra Club hardback! The color in several of the photographs is even better than in the original (and difficult to find/very expensive) book, thanks in part to the cooperation of the museum which received Porter's works as a bequest.

Average customer rating:

Very Good

Utah Art, Utah Artists
Vern G. Swanson , Robert S. Olpin , Donna L Poulton , and Janie L. Rogers
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith, Publisher
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 158685111X

Book Description

Utah Art, Utah Artists surveys 150 years of the extraordinary talent and achievements of Utah artists. This overview ranges from the sublime paintings of a resourceful ranching woman to the polished work of artists trained in Paris, Rome, and New York. It highlights the rural and the cosmopolitan, the traditional and the modern, the concrete and the transcendent that encompass Utah art. This sweeping exhibition showcases 300 works of art by 220 artists painstakingly compiled from a list of 10,000 Utah artists. Selection was made in light of five considerations: quality of the work; critical acclaim and professional success of the artist; belated but deserved recognition of the artist; young emerging artists who are the future of art in Utah; and a representative sampling of periods, styles, mediums and geographic regions of the state. One hundred twenty of the artworks are reproduced in rich color, most illustrated for the first time. Selected works and biographical material on the artists are presented chronologically, providing a perspective on Utah art that will make this volume an essential reference for collectors, scholars, and enthusiasts of Utah art. Vern G. Swanson, Ph.D., has been the director of the Springville Museum of Art since 1980. He has written numerous books and articles and he is coauthor with Drs. R. S. Olpin and W. C. Seifrit of Utah Art, Utah Painting and Sculpture, and Utah Arts. Robert S. Olpin, Ph.D., a University of Utah Professor of Art History, has become a familiar face on his eighteen-part television course on the Art Life in Utah series. He has acted as a consultant to such organizations as the National Gallery and Vose Galleries. Donna L. Poulton, Ph.D., is the Assistant Curator of Exhibitions at the Springville Museum if Art. For the past three years she has been documenting and chronicling, on film, the lives and works of Utah artists. Janie L. Rogers, M.A., wrote her master's thesis on Utah architecture. Rogers is a founding member of the Associated Art Historians, Inc., Salt Lake City.

Customer Reviews:

Very Good.......2007-05-30

Nice overview of historic and contemporary Utah artists. Pretty good selection of color plates, with some black and whtite illustrations.

Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment

Average customer rating:

"Topaz Moon": The Great Nature of Chiura Obata
Great art and great social history
Great for educating children about Executive Order 9066.
A compelling and fascinating work

Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment
Kimi Kodani Hill
Manufacturer: Heyday Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1890771260

Book Description

Chiura Obata was one of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans forcefully relocated in 1942 from their homes and communities to the stark barracks of desert internment camps. As an artist faithfully recording the world around him, Obatas work from this period gives us a view into the camps that is at once honest in the details of austerity and hardship, and strikingly lyrical in its portrayal of hope and beauty even in incarceration.

Topaz Moon presents more than 100 of Obatas sketches, sumi paintings, and watercolors from the internment period. Lovingly collected and edited by his granddaughter, Obatas work gives testament to his artistic genius and a spirit undefeated by adversity.

Customer Reviews:

"Topaz Moon": The Great Nature of Chiura Obata.......2005-03-16

"Topaz Moon" is a slim little book that is filled with a selection of the interment imagery of Chiura Obata. The imagery is both in his writings and in his art. And both make lasting impressions.

The images range from simple line drawing to watercolors executed while a victim of Executive Order 9066 in which all West Coast Japanese Americans were rounded up and placed in interment camps. It is amazing what he was able to accomplish in the face of circumstances beyond his control. Obata's work is excellent.

"Topaz Moon", "Obata's Yosemite" and "Nature Art With Chiura Obata" are the only three books currently in print about the remarkable artist and human being that was Chiura Obata. The three books present different facets of his life and all are worth reading and seeing. Highly recommended.

Great art and great social history.......2000-06-07

This is a wonderful book. I bought it for the artwork which is fresh, inventive, and very skillful but the social history is equally engrossing. The text is clearly written and generous with quotes.

At 8.25" square it's smaller than your average coffee table book, but the pages are rich with intelligence, beauty and invention.

Great for educating children about Executive Order 9066........2000-04-04

Most of the artwork are done in black ink on white paper. It makes for a stark and bleak testament to the difficulties faced and endured by the internees. The book is a great teaching tool for children and adults, not only to learn about the internment, but to study the artwork.

A compelling and fascinating work.......2000-03-22

Topaz Moon is a testament to the power of art, not simply as a mechanism for creating beauty, but also as a method of documenting history. Faced with the social disruption and indignity of relocation and internment in WWII, Professor Chiura Obata of the University of California at Berkeley chose to use his considerable artistic gifts to create what amounts to a visual diary of his internment experience. Seemingly hundreds of drawings, pen and ink paintings and watercolors (too many to count) document Professor Obata and his families experiences from the start of the war, through relocation to Tanforan, internment at Topaz, and beyond, in stark terms, quiet dignity and haunting beauty.

Unlike photography which can only memorialize the actual events of a moment, painting and sketching allows the artist to document his or her own emotional reaction to those events. Dorothea Lange, herself an admirer of Professor Obata, took photographs of the Tanforan relocation center, including Professor Obata's art classes, some of which are reproduced in Topaz Moon. However, compared to Professor Obata's own first hand sketches of the internment process, Lange's photos appear emotionless. This is because Professor Obata infuses his documentary sketches, which are remeniscent of Van Gogh's figural drawings, with the powerful emotional reactions he felt in witnessing scenes in which he too was a victim.

But Topaz Moon is a text which is more about creating community than casting blame. Kimi Kodani Hill, Professor Obata's granddaughter, has framed her grandfather's art with an insightful, succinct and compelling history of Professor Obata's life and the events of the time. The anectdotes relayed by Ms. Hill emphasize the support, assistance and sympathy given to the Obata's by their many freinds outside of the camps. I was struck by the fact the President of U.C. Berkeley, Robert Gordon Sproul, who himself was vocally opposed to the internment, personally rescued Professor Obata's life's work of art and stored that art in his official U.C. residence for the duration of the war.

While Topaz Moon is more than an art book, the art itself is more than merely documentary. Professor Obata's finished paintings and sumi-e works represent some of the best American artwork of the 20th Century. Works such as Moonlight Over Topaz (commissioned by Eleanor Roosevelt while Professor Obata was still interred), Hospital Topaz, and Silent Moonlight at Tanforan Relocation Center would stand out in any museum. In their own way, these images are every bit as beautiful as his earlier Yosemite woodblock prints.

Book Description

In 1970 Robert Smithson (1938-1973), one of the most innovative and provocative artists of the twentieth century, created the landmark earthwork Spiral Jetty at Rozel Point on Utah's Great Salt Lake. This dramatic and highly influential work forms a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide and stretches out counterclockwise into the lake's translucent red water. Composed of black basalt rocks and earth, the sculpture comprises the materials of its location: mud, salt crystals, rocks, water.
The contributors to this comprehensive publication consider the sculpture in relation to its eponymous companions--a text work and a film. These essays situate this renowned series of works alongside Smithson's critical writings, proposals, drawings, sources, and models. Amply illustrated with archival and new photographs of the Jetty and many comparative illustrations, this book makes evident why Smithson's art and writings have had such a powerful impact on art and art theory for over thirty years.

Sandstone Sunsets: In Search of Everett Ruess

Average customer rating:

If you're interested in Everett, you'll probably enjoy this.
A ramble to nowhere
Best naturalist work on Escalante
A good read if you have explored Escalante National Monument
A search for Everett becomes a search for self.

Sandstone Sunsets: In Search of Everett Ruess
Mark A. Taylor
Manufacturer: Gibbs Smith Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Artists, Architects & Photographers | Arts & Literature | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 087905803X

Customer Reviews:

If you're interested in Everett, you'll probably enjoy this........2005-08-28

The mystery of Everett Ruess is a cool one. A guy walks into the desert, carves "Nemo" (Latin for "nobody") in two places on the canyon walls, and then disappears. It seems as if he set up his disappearance perfectly--he'd even talked about it before--and yet lots of evidence points to him being murdered. Seventy years have passed, and still no one knows for sure.

If you're already interested in this mystery, or would like an introduction it, "Sandstone Sunsets" is a good read. It's full of interesting theories and evidences that aren't commonly heard elsewhere, and it's a fairly well written.

It's funny though, in the About the Author, it says Mark Taylor has occasionally written for "Hustler" magazine, and in the book he often describes slickrock pinnacles and mounds as phallic, or breast-like. That cracks me up.

A ramble to nowhere.......2002-03-30

This book is a review of various hallucinations of the author encountered during his pointless wanderings (mostly by vehicle) through the desert country of the Southwest. He never seems to get to the locations of Ruess' disappearance, and evades them by taking us to Moab and other irrelevant places where he had happened to park his car in the past. He offers several far out theories on Ruess' disappearance, but nothing useful except for the names of several persons who might have absconded with Ruess' possessions but never capitalized on them. The author is the exploiter, capitalizing on the Ruess name and story to sell a book. Nice cover.

Best naturalist work on Escalante.......2001-01-17

This book is a most thoughtful and insightful view into the reasons we seek out nature and journey into the unknown. Like Ruess, author Taylor takes us on his own personal journey into one of the most breathtaking geographys in the world. The book is not meant to be a definative work on what happened to Ruess but rather a deep reflective journey into our souls. Unlike the previous reviewer who referred to the book as a novel, it is creative non-fiction and was named best creative non-fiction book of the year 1998 by the western writers of America. I have read the book three times and all the published reviews, more than twenty. All consider the writing excellent, thoughtful and filled with bits of philosophy about life. Critisms include editing errors.

A good read if you have explored Escalante National Monument.......2001-01-07

This book is not the book to buy, if you're looking for 1) an authoritative biography on the life of Everett Ruess 2) a groundbreaking investigativation into the circumstances surrounding Everett Ruess' disappearance 3) an exciting novel about daring adventures in the Escalante National Monument

The highs and lows of this book are in actuality quite mundane. From the bickering between hiker and irresponsible tourists and the silliness of shouting "Everett Ruess, where are you?" in the middle of nowhere.

However, having hiked Davis Gulch to Lake Powell, searching for hints to the Ruess mystery, and locating Nemo inscriptions, I still enjoyed this book.

The Escalante National Monument area, recently "protected" by Bill Clinton in his second term, is a fabulous wilderness area located in Southern Utah, near the Arizona border. To explore this area frequently is to know the story of Everett Ruess. Not just of the plot, but also the emotion that must have motivated Ruess to his untimely demise.

Sandstone Sunsets relates the story of Everett Ruess and more importantly the author's introspective search for the truth behind his disappearance. This book lacks any groundbreaking physical evidence or testimony, and certainly doesn't reach the level of depth that Krakauer's novel "Into the Wild" achieves in examining the journey of Alex McCandless. Of course it's a lot more difficult task for the author, since the aforementioned events took place a generation ago.

Taylor (the author) reaches some pretty wild conclusions and speculations. Nevertheless from the perspective of someone who has been to Escalante repeatedly, I found the novel very entertaining. Sandstone Sunsets deals with physical territory with which I'm familiar with, and passionate about. And it's a novel motivated out of interest in a topic, Everett Ruess, who has lived on to demonstrate to modern day outdoor enthusiasts, that fascination with the wilderness is not just a new trend made hip by SUV commercials.

A search for Everett becomes a search for self........1999-02-26

I recommend Taylor's book to you who have read W.L.Rusho's "Everett Reuss" and understand Everett's mystical nature in his exploration of himself as well as the wilderness he so loved. Also your appreciation will be greatly enhanced if you are familiar with the country Everett traveled. This book is not a serious effort to solve the mystery of Everett's disappeareance. Rather, as Taylor retraces Everett's steps he describes his own spiritual journey; his personal counterpart to Everett's quest over the same territory a half century earlier. Taylor writes, "I knew my search for Everett had become more important than finding him." Reuss was a romantic, so is Taylor. The inner exporation is what counts, the physical exploration merely the vehicle for self-undertanding. If you are literal minded this book will disappoint. Me, I enjoyed the book. I thought it well written and organized and a quick, easy read. It enriched my understanding of the spiritual journey of Everett and its parallel in my own life. A negative. I found the speculations about Emery Kolb, etc, so far-fetched as to be bizarre; but Taylor never offers these as serious possibilities. Still, it were better had they been omitted. There were some minor errors in the book as has been pointed out by other reviewers; but they appeared to me to be editing mistakes, not those of the author. All in all, for me a very worthwhile read; but then I am so in love with Everett Reuss I make no claim to objectivity.

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Kershisnik: Painting from Life
Leslie Norris , Mark Magleby , and Brian Thomas Kershisnik
Manufacturer: Guild Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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New Moon (Twilight, Book 2)

ASIN: 1893164179

The Savage View: Charles Savage, Pioneer Mormon Photographer

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The Savage View: Charles Savage, Pioneer Mormon Photographer
Bradley W. Richards , and C. R. Savage
Manufacturer: Carl Mautz Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Illustrations & photographs & gatefold cover & 10 x 10 & Brad Richards' research into the life of C. R. Savage is impressive. His book promises to add considerable detail to the life of one of Western America's most important nineteenth-century photographers." --Glenn Willumson, Palmer Museum of Art This book-length biography of Savage, one of the West's great figures, features a portfolio of his work, a list of public collections, a bibliography and genealogy, and a chronology of his photographic trips.

Average customer rating:

Opportunities lost
A soul's pursuit - It's worth the time.
Maundering Journey
"And thus she resigned herself to the one path open to her"
A sexy, exuberant, beautifully written picaresque!

Breath and Bones
Susann Cokal
Manufacturer: Unbridled Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1932961062

Book Description

In 1884, Famke Summerfugl is ousted from her convent in Denmark for . . . sensuousness and pulled from servitude by a second-rate painter named Albert Castle. Loving to be looked at, and able to stand perfectly still without shivering, Famke is the ideal artist's model.

When Albert takes his eight-foot masterpiece and leaves his model behind, Famke sets out over the Atlantic, convinced that she is his muse.

Following Mirabilis, her highly acclaimed debut, Susann Cokal blends pre-Raphaelite painting, American brothels, Utahan polygamists, a bit of cross-dressing, a dynamite-wielding labor movement, one California millionaire, and the invention of electircal sexual stimulation (as treatment for consumption) into a comic novel that gallops across the American West.

Customer Reviews:

Opportunities lost.......2007-01-08

Susanna Cokal introduces us to Famke, a poor Danish orphan with Tuberculosis whose sex appeal gets her in trouble with the nuns and in bed with the rest of the orphanage, a painter, a polygamist morman & an early model vibrator, all while a multitude of others pursue what's under her skirts across the Atlantic and the American West in the late 1800s. Cokal's debut novel "Miribilis" was darkly sexual & intriguing - she clearly has the imagination and skill to deliver tantalizing stories! But in comparison, "Breath and Bones" disappoints.

Famke searches for Albert, a narcissistic mediocre painter with whom she believes herself to be in love, throughout the story. Her quest takes her across the Atlantic and the United States, into a polygamist family, and in and out of numerous brothels in the west. Famke's story lacks bits of reality needed to keep this reader truly interested. Though she is a young woman who apparantly oozes sex and is traveling alone, she encounters no violence. She is blissfully ignorant and blind to obvious coercion, and appears to be an accomplice to her own "captivity" at times. Further, she is wildly successful posing as a man and a painter though she is neither and descriptions of her physical appearance and artistic abilities lead one to wonder how she could have pulled off either ruse. Her luck and ability to land on her feet, which I suppose may amuse some, seemed too contrived.

Stories of such a physical journey during the early years of a young woman's life often parallel an internal journey to finding a sense of self, self respect, etc. Famke's character, however, remains nearly one-dimensional. She is stubborn about her health to the point of her near death. She misses out on opportunities for true affection to pursue a narcissist who never respected her. She does not use her voice to defend herself at any opportunity. Famke is hell-bent on believing her limited exposure to "art" via Albert is perfect, unassailable and complete. These components of character were offered with little context and simply just didn't add up.

Cokal opens and closes the book with a morbid scene which holds promise of a dark and gruesome story, but somehow that promise is lost in the pages between. The elements which advertise this to be a bizarre and ribald tale (polygamists, brothels, etc) only provided an off-beat background for this meandering middling tale.

A soul's pursuit - It's worth the time. .......2005-09-15

In Breath and Bones, Susann Cokal explores pursuit - of beauty, perfection, art, love, lust, survival and even death. Possessed by their own addictions, each character follows one after another that person they believe will fulfill the missing pieces of their lives.

The repetition of the searching threatens to smother the reader until he or she falls beneath the surface of the plot to ponder the compulsions that drive humans toward that something they believe will make them whole.

Cokal bids us ask - Are our perceptions and reflections true or merely creatures of our soul's pursuits?

Maundering Journey.......2005-08-26

Not written as well as I like. Cokal should have restrained herself a bit, instead of indulging herself and sending the protagonist on many ridiculous, not to mention fanciful, journeys. A failed picaresque novel indeed. Got so tired of the outlandished plot of the novel that I stopped reading--which is very unusual for me. I would not recommend this book.

"And thus she resigned herself to the one path open to her".......2005-07-01

Art, science, sex, and the unstoppable geography of love, feature in this story of absolute Dickensian proportions. Set in 1886, Susan Cokal's gorgeously imagined Breath and Bones, is a sweeping saga, a giant feat of literary imagination that covers two continents and is told with a kind of breathy, wild, and unadulterated abandon.

From the snowy streets of Copenhagen to a remote dust-filled Mormon settlement in Utah, to the rough-and-ready mining towns of Colorado and points west - San Francisco, the city of artistic and intellectual enlightenment, Breath and Bones is always compelling and never dull.

Famke Summerfugl has recently been released from the Immaculate Heart Catholic Orphanage. Young, and idealistic, but also hard working, Famke finds employment as a house cleaner for a Herr Skatkammer. However, Famke is soon awakened to the possibilities of art and life, and is almost immediately seduced by English Painter Albert Castle.

Offering to pose as his muse, and desperately wanting more "detail, more beauty and more of the world," Famke soon falls in love with the young artist. The affection is reciprocated, as Albert is absolutely besotted with her naked, and unabashed beauty; he likens Famke to a gorgeous Botticelli angel and vows to immortalize her stunning beauty in a painting.

Albert's paints Famke as the myth of Nimue; it's his magnum opus and he believes it will be hung in the English Royal Academy's annual exhibition. He also hopes it will allow him to join the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, win him respect and commissions, and convince his father to continue the financial support.

For Famke, Albert is her savior and hero, so when he heads to America, Famke, remains totally lovesick "and in love with all the passion and force and urgency and trepidation of her years." With an unusual blend of naiveté and courage, opportunism and single-mindedness, Famke fends off assaults on her virtue and sets off across the Atlantic following the no-better-than-average painter who has abandoned her.

But America is not the land of hope and glory that Famke was led to believe. Mired with a bloody, rasping cough, that steadily debilitates her, Famke traverses a country on the verge of industrialization in search of her true love, her beauty and unadulterated loveliness steadily captivating the people of the West.

Famke ends up in Utah, married to Heber Goodhouse, a Mormon, who wants to establish his fortune by farming silk worms. A Nordic soul trapped in the land of dust and heat, Famke plots her escape, frustrated and homesick, she never gets enough: enough air, Albert, and paintings.

In Denver, she tries to convince herself that the huge, rough, rushing city of brick buildings and carriages resembles Copenhagen. The city emanated the stench that accompanied all flourishing enterprises: "coal, smoke, sewers, and carthorse dung." For this is the world of the Wild West, "a world of mutilated Indians, gun-holstered ranchers, and whole flocks of "Ludere" - prostitutes."

The stockyards fill the air with the reek of blood and the mountains of white and bones inspire a lonesome feeling that makes Famke cry. But she keeps going, because the West is a place where men are likely to buy buckeyes and potboilers; obscure works by unknown artists. Dressed like a man so that she can survive more easily, Famke sleeps in inexpensive bagnios, nickel-a-night flophouses, and hog ranches - homes for decrepit prostitutes who now sell themselves cheap.

As Famke follows Albert's trail, from saloon to saloon to general store, she discovers that he has left behind a string of portraits of prostitutes, executed with overtones of Danish warrior women, Valkries, and muses, tinged with Pre-Raphaelite romanticism - all with some element of her, or so she hopes.

Cokal writes with a formidable knowledge of the period, bringing to life a many-layered and multi-faceted America. This is an America that is full of polygamists, wide-eyed immigrants, corrupt journalists, prostitutes, and amateur scientists, all of whom are seduced into the West and it's promise of wealth, adventure and prosperity. It's a time of profound, tumultuous change with the author focusing on the human face, the individuals who value the fragile beauty of the earth, the vivid colors, and the promise of new growth and expansion.

Our gutsy and fearless heroine flees from one tight spot to another, while gradually getting sicker with tuberculosis, "the worms gnawing their way into her lungs, spinning their artful cocoons to smother her." While all the time she aches to be reunited with Albert - hoping that she might paint along side him matching his strokes with her own until there is no telling where his work ends and hers begins.

Sanctuary for Famke intermittently comes in the form of amateur doctor, Edward Versailles, and his Hygeia Springs Institute for Phthisis. Famke is a goddess in his eyes, a woman whose funereal loveliness seemed to "call into question the capacity of art to represent anything at all."

The characters in Breath and Bones are alive with the pulsating heart of history; they're grappling with change in a world where the artistic, scientific, and the economic have often formed uneasy and ill-at-ease alliances. Cokal paints a portrait of a world alive with the possibilities of hope, courage, love, and of mythical and divine immortality. Mike Leonard June 05.

A sexy, exuberant, beautifully written picaresque!.......2005-05-15

From its stunning prologue to the disturbing, shattering beauty of its finale, Breath and Bones gets under your skin. This sexy, exuberant picaresque takes you and its heroine on a fast-paced ride from Copenhagen to San Francisco via the wild west of the late nineteenth century, but each place it takes you is so immediate and vividly rendered it stays with you long after you close the book. Cokal's originality, humor, and extraordinary ear for language purge historical fiction of its fustiness and bring it to life.

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