The Red Fez

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Chris Spring

"Angaza Afrika - the Swahili for 'shed light on Africa' - is a statement of this book's mission: to illuminate Africa's immensely fertile artistic landscape. Africa has emerged from its colonial past and is asserting its own identity. African art is not only confined to the continent itself, but has spread throughout the world. From the enforced migrations of the slave trade through the upheavals of the post-colonial period, African art and artists are also now established in Europe, North America, the Carribean and South America." "This book brings together more than 60 of Africa's most creative contemporary artists. Their work leaps off the page with more than 350 colour images. In addition to painters, sculptors and photographers, there are also a number of artists whose work embraces performance and installation. The materials they use range from the traditional to the highly unorthodox, as does their imagery." "This is the first book on contemporary African art to harness the creative energy pulsating from not only the continent but also from the rich global community that has developed outside it."--Jacket.

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Jean Kennedy

"Although modern African literature and music have become well known in the West, through the contributions of such famous authors as Chinua Achebe and Bessie Head and such popular musicians as King Sunny Ade and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the continent's vast body of modern visual arts has been little explored." "In New Currents, Ancient Rivers Jean Kennedy surveys African art of the last fifty years, offering an expansive perspective on the visual arts of the continent. Just as ancient rivers flow through the modern African landscape, so too do the rituals and traditions of the past run deeply through modern African art. The past is able to coexist in vibrant synthesis with the present largely because of a critical constant in African culture, the acceptance of change." "The culmination of twenty years' research, New Currents, Ancient Rivers is the largest survey of contemporary African art, presenting nearly 150 artists of sub-Saharan Africa, primarily from Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and South Africa--painters, sculptors, fiber artists, printmakers, and filmmakers. As Kennedy examines their artistic development, she shows the many ways the artists meld elements from modern life, the legacy of colonialism, foreign technology, the natural world, and the past to create art that may be divorced from the original purposes of ritual but that still embraces traditional rhythms. The author also briefly discusses the influence of the oral and literary traditions on the visual arts." "New Currents, Ancient Rivers is a tribute to the vitality and diversity of a continent and its peoples. This progressive book recognizes individual artists, many of whom are virtually unknown in Europe and the United States."--Jacket.

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Phyllis Limbacher Tildes

A gentle, nearsighted peasant girl rescues the legendary Baba Babochka and is rewarded with a magic babushka that enables her to create beautiful "pysanky," or decorated eggs.

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paintings and story by William Kurelek

Canadian artist Kurelek's own childhood--on prairie farms during the 30s--vividly illuminates this vision of a boy's winter life on a prairie farm. Both realistic and lyrical, it captures its subject in a way that speaks to readers of all ages.