Book of the Day > Nari Ward: We the People. Published by Phaidon.

“Nari Ward: We the People features over thirty sculptures, paintings, videos, and large-scale installations from throughout Ward’s twenty-five-year career, highlighting his status as one of the most important and influential sculptors working today. Since the early 1990s, Ward has produced his works by accumulating staggering amounts of humble materials and repurposing them in consistently surprising ways. His approach evokes a variety of folk traditions and creative acts of recycling from Jamaica, where he was born, as well as the material textures of Harlem, where he has lived and worked for the past twenty-five years. Yet Ward also relies on research into specific histories and sites to uncover connections among geographically and culturally disparate communities and to explore the tension between tradition and transformation. His incisive works frequently comment on issues surrounding race, poverty, consumerism, and diasporic identity in American culture. This book accompanies a major retrospective at the New Museum, highlighting his work from the early 1990s - including Amazing Grace (1993)."

Book of the Day > Dan Monick: Goodbye to Romance. Published by Cash Machine & These Days - LA.

“There is a romanticism that comes with documenting this rapidly changing city. The images are homages to not only what seems to be disappearing but also a celebration of perseverance. Every bodega, storefront, donut shop and dry cleaner that Monick has admired anxiously becomes his subject matter. “If I saw something, I used to make a note to return to shoot it at later date. Now its U-turns and ‘sorry I’m late’ as I am never sure it will be there tomorrow...with every image I feel like I say goodbye to romance" - Katherine Whitlock, Los Angeles, 2019. Catalog for Goodbye To Romance exhibition held at These Days gallery April - June 2019.

Book of the Day > Wild Beads of Africa: Old Powderglass Beads From the Collection of Billy Steinberg

"This is the first book dedicated to African powderglass beads, with over 180 photographs of gorgeous pieces from a collection assembled by songwriter Billy Steinberg (co-writer of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”). Most of the pieces showcased in this handsomely designed volume are West African beads often referred to as Bodom or Akoso, and were made by Ashanti and Ewe people in Ghana and Togo during the 19th century using finely ground glass sourced from broken bottles, windows or other beads, creating brightly colorful pieces in shiny colors with a handmade textural quality. Highly detailed photography by Fredrik Nilsen provides a comprehensive look at the collection, along with texts by scholar Jamey D. Allen about the history, classification and glassmaking technologies employed in the varieties of beads covered in the book. A glossary provided by Allen also makes this a useful reference title."

Book of the Day > Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist. Published by Phoenix Art Museum & Hirmer.

"Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist will be the first survey of this under recognized American painter in over 22 years. Her distinctive paintings could be described as metaphysical landscapes rooted in the California desert near Cathedral City. Pelton chiefly drew on her own inspirations, superstitions, and beliefs to exemplify emotional states. The publication seeks to clarify the artist’s significance and role within the cannon of American Modernism but also against the legacy of European abstraction. It contextualizes her work against her contemporaries, Marsden Hartley and Georgia O’Keeffe, and their distinct versions of American spiritual modernism. Pelton’s highly symbolic paintings were inspired by religious sources ranging from Theosophy and Agni Yoga to the spiritual teachings of Dane Rudhyar and Will Levington Comfort. Over three decades she devoted herself to painting spiritual abstractions, which conveyed her “light message to the world.”