Artist Book Club

Let’s read & discuss one great art book every month. Some will be novels centered around art, others might be critiques examining the life and work of a particular artist, some might be books on technique written by a particular artist we are interested in. Questions will be provided to draw us deeper into the ideas presented in the book. No drawing or painting skills required. Come and enjoy the discussion even if you did not finish the book.

Enrichment:

Please bring a show and tell of creative projects inspired by the reading. The projects may be exercises directly taken from the book, or inspired by what you read. This is just for fun and to deepen our understanding.

When:

Meet monthly on third Thursday from 6:30-8:00 pm

Where:

Zoom Room. The link provided with sign-up.

Investment:

tickets $10 donation on Eventbrite

November Book Choice:

Lark Keeler is co-hosting the book club with me. Lark is past president of the Florida Art Educators Association, she is a lower school art teacher at St Andrews School and an art instructor at the NSU Art Museum.

2021

Artist Book Club Selections

January 2021

The Creative Habit

by Twyla Tharp

All it takes to make creativity a part of your life is the willingness to make it a habit. It is the product of preparation and effort, and is within reach of everyone.

February 2021

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa

by Marilyn Chase

This is the story of a woman who wielded imagination and hope in the face of intolerance and who transformed everything she touched into art.

March 2021

Find Your Artistic Voice

by Lisa Congdon

Develop and embrace your unique creative perspective with genuine confidence.

April 2021

The Accidental Creative

by Todd Henry

Have better ideas, faster, without the stress and burnout

May 27, 2021

The Night Portrait

by Lisa Morelli

An exciting, dual-timeline historical novel about the creation of one of Leonardo da Vinci's most famous paintings, Portrait of a Lady with an Ermine, and the woman who fought to save it

June 17, 2021

Painting Enlightenment

by Paula Arai

This book is both a work of art and a rich contemplation of the Heart Sutra. The artwork by Iwasaki Tsuneo is breathtaking and subtle and it is beautifully reproduced here. In the text, Arai gives us a beautiful series of meditations on the Heart Sutra based on Iwasaki's art. This is a book to spend time with and to savor.

July 22, 2021

The Gifts of Imperfection

by Brene Brown

A powerful and inspiring book that explores how to cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection to embrace your imperfections and to recognize that you are enough

August 19, 2021

The Art Forger

by B.A. Shapiro

This is a novel that is based on a true crime: a $500 million art heist at the Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. The story centers around artist Claire Roth, who is good at making reproductions of famous paintings. Early in the book, a dealer asks Claire to make a forgery of one of the Edgar Degas paintings that were stolen from the Gardner. Claire recognizes that she's making a deal with the devil, and part of her payment is she gets her own art show.

September 23, 2021

Mindfulness and the Art of Drawing

by Wendy Ann Greenhalgh

This is not a book of drawing techniques. It is, instead, a book about the experience of drawing.

October 2021

Light in the Dark

Edited by Joe Fassler

What inspires you? That’s the simple, but profound question posed to forty-six renowned authors in LIGHT THE DARK. Each writer begins with a favorite passage from a novel, a song, a poem—something that gets them started and keeps them going with the creative work they love.

November 2021

The World to Come

by Dara Horne

A million-dollar Chagall is stolen from a museum during a singles' cocktail hour. The unlikely thief, former child prodigy Benjamin Ziskind, is convinced that the painting once hung in his parents' living room. This work of art opens a door through which we discover his family's startling history--from an orphanage in Soviet Russia where Chagall taught to suburban New Jersey and the jungles of Vietnam.

December 2021

The 12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark

by Don Thompson

The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art and Auction Houses

Great Art Book Selections for Future Book Club Years:

Fiction:

The Lady and the Unicorn - Tracy Chevalier
The Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
The DaVinci Code - Dan Brown
Loving Frank (Frank Lloyd Wright) - Nancy Horan
Leonora in the Morning Light (Leonora Carrington & Max Ernst) - Michaela Carter
Lust for Life (Van Gogh) - Irving Stone
A Month in the Country - JL Carr
The Blood of Flowers - Anita Amirrezvani
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Last Nude - Ellis Avery (Tamara de Lempicka)
The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos - Dominic Smith
Cats Eye - Margaret Atwood
The Painter From Shanghai - Jennifer Cody Epstein
The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
What I Loved - Siri Hustvedt
The Garden of Earthly Delights - Robert Dodds
How to Be Both - Ali Smith
Theft: A Love Story - Peter Carey
An Object of Beauty - Steve Martin
Chasing Cezanne - Peter Mayle
Leonardo's Swans - Karen Essex
The Passion of Artemisia - Susan Vreeland
The Birth of Venus - Sarah Dunant
Leonardo and the Last Supper - Ross King
Caravaggio; A Life Sacred and Profane - Andrew Graham-Dixon
Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Diana Vreeland
Lady in Ermine — The Story of A Woman Who Painted the Renaissance: A Biographical Novel of Sofonisba Anguissola - Donna DiGiuseppe
The Illuminator - Brenda Rickman Vantrease
I, Mona Lisa - Jeanne Calogridis
Artemisia - Alexandra LaPierre
The Lost Painting - Jonathan Harr

Non-Fiction:

Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind - Scott Barry Kaufman
Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars - Camille Paglia
Broad Strokes - 15 Women Artists who made art and history - Bridget Quinn
On Color - David Scott Kastan, Stephen Farthing
Art Money & Success - Maria Brophy
Real Artists Don't Starve - Jeff Goins
Art as Social Action - Gregory Sholette, Chloe Bass and Social Practice Queens
Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture - Ross King
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees - Lawrence Weschler
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life - Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles
Big Magic - Elizabeth Gilbert
The Heart to Start: Stop Procrastinating & Start Creating - David Kadavy
Art and Faith, A Theology of Making - Makoto Fujimora
The War of Art - Steven Pressfield
Do the Work - Steven Pressfield
9th Street Women - Mary Gabriel
a short life of trouble: forty years in the new york art world - Marcia Tucker
How Art Can Make You Happy - Bridget Watson Payne
Practicable: From Participation to Interaction in Contemporary Art - Samuel Bianchini & Erik Verhagen
The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Edmund de Waal
7 Days in the Art World - Sarah Thornton
The Accidental Masterpiece, on the Art of Life and Vice Versa - Michael Kimmelman
The Painted Word - Tom Wolfe
Art & Visual Perception; A Psychology of the Creative Eye - Rudolf Arnheim
What Are You Looking At? 150 years of Modern Art in a Nutshell - Will Gompertz
The Vein of Gold - Julia Cameron
The Artist's Way - Julia Cameron
Steal Like an Artist - Austin Kleon
How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci - Michael J. Gelb
Art & Fear - David Bayles & Ted Orland
Ways of Looking - How to experience Contemporary Art - Ossian Ward
Secret Knowledge - David Hockney

2021:

The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life - Twyla Tharp
The Art Forger - Barbara A. Shapiro
Night Portrait - Laura Morelli digs into the past for tale of a Da Vinci portrait that spans more than 500 years
Painting Enlightenment; Healing Visons of the Heart Sutra - Paula Arai - The Buddhist Art of Iwaski Tsuneo
Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa - Marilyn Chase
Find Your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic - Lisa Congdon
The 12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark: The curious economics of contemporary art - Don Thompson, Adam Verner
Mindfulness and the Art of Drawing - Wendy Ann Greenhalgh
Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process - by Joe Fassler (Editor), & Roxane Gay
The World to Come - Dara Horne
The Gifts of Imperfection - Brene Brown