Visual Arts

A guide to living a creative life from 9 to 5 and beyond.

Based on the hit handmade 'zine, The Artist in the Office is an inspirational, interactive book for any artist living in the real world. It encourages small acts of creativity and a simple shift of perspective to help readers bring their artistic selves into the workplace and thrive in all aspects of their lives.

Readers are prompted to undertake a wide range of liberating activities, from the mundane to the sublime, that won't put their 9-to- 5 job at risk, including:

•Take lunchtime adventures to rouse your spirit: a bookstore, a flower shop, or a park

•Pick one ordinary object each day and take pictures every time you see it: coffee mugs, shoes, office plants

•Get up an hour early or stay up an hour later and devote the time to your creative work. Schedule it in like any other mandatory appointment or meeting

•Collect doodles from Post-Its or notebooks and reassemble them in a sketchbook

A stunning Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of the activist artist's extraordinary journals

Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980's. His artwork-with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion-filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, twenty years after his death. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition features ninety black-and-white images of classic artwork and never-before-published Polaroid images, and is a remarkable glimpse of a man who, in his quest to become an artist, instead became an icon.

Much of Banksy's early work on the streets of Bristol has been lost, but this book records those works which appeared throughout the city. Author Steve Wright explores the streets of Banksy's Bristol and interviews many of the people who worked with Banksy in his early years. We believe this to be the most complete photographic collections of Banksy's Bristol work from the freehand wall paintings in Easton to the iconic Mild Mild West, his stencils and more. It contains more than 100 images.

This all new follow on the from original Stickerbomb book, is filled with a brand new collection of more than 280 specially-commissioned stickers by artists, illustrators and graffiti writers from around the world, many of whom have not been featured in a publication before. It will appeal to a young market of designers, street artists and illustrators, plus street art fans and anyone who collects stickers.

From the author of Wreck This Journal, an interactive guide for exploring and documenting the art and science of everyday life.

Artists and scientists analyze the world around them in surprisingly similar ways, by observing, collecting, documenting, analyzing, and comparing. In this captivating guided journal, readers are encouraged to explore their world as both artists and scientists.

The mission Smith proposes? “To document and observe the world around you. As if you’ve never seen it before. Take notes. Collect things you find on your travels. Document findings. Notice patterns. Copy. Trace. Focus on one thing at a time. Record what you are drawn to.”

With a series of interactive prompts and a beautifully hand-illustrated two-color package, readers will enjoy exploring and discovering the world through this gorgeous book.

Remember those childhood days spent running in your bare feet, playing make-believe, and most of all, living life with wonderment? That youthful enthusiasm and playfulness are key to discovering who you are and what you love to do. Living Out Loud is the perfect prescription for a creative jump start to your life. Included are games, projects, activities, crafts, postcards, and playful ideas that will send you off on an exciting adventure, where you'll discover inspiration around and within you.

Who hasn't, at one time or other, kept a journal? The impulse to record our daily lives on paper is nothing if not universal. Still, only a few of us have the discipline to make it past the first few entries, and fewer still manage to create diaries whose insight and visual beauty can inspire anyone but their authors. Drawing from Life: The Journal as Art is an exploration of these exceptions—books of obsessive wonder filled to their borders with drawings, sketches, watercolors, graphs, charts, lists, collages, portraits, and photographs. Jennifer New takes readers on a spirited tour into the private worlds of journal keepers—an architect, a traveler, a film director, an archeologist, a cancer patient, a songwriter, a quiltmaker, a gardener, an artist, a cyclist, and a scientist, to name just a few—illustrating a broad range of journaling styles and techniques that in the end show how each of us can go about documenting our everyday lives. Excerpts from journals by such artists as Maira Kalman, Steven Holl, David Byrne, and Mike Figgis give us a peek at how creative souls observe, reflect, and explore. For those who already keep a journal, Drawing from Life will be an inspiration. For those who have always wanted to—or tried and failed—it might just be the motivation needed to get past that first week.

'Let's go see the Frida Kahlos.'

It seemed inconceivable that after decades of exhibitions, auctions, books, and movies, unpublished Frida Kahlo artwork could still be found anywhere, much less a shop in a converted textile factory. 'Well, if you don't believe me just come along,' replied her traveling companion. Levine, having recently relocated to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, could not resist and was soon en route to La Buhardilla Antiquarios (The Attic Antiques).

Down an arched stone corridor in a small back room sat two wooden chests, a metal trunk, a wooden box, and a battered old suitcase. On the lid of the suitcase was the name 'Sra. KAHLO DE RIVERA.' The shop owners opened the five cases to reveal a jumble of objects, including paintings, drawings, keepsake boxes, annotated books, clothing, a diary, and other assorted items and ephemera. Levine picked up one of ten airmail letters, inscribed with the words 'personal archive of Frida K. and personal archive of my private life.'

Finding Frida Kahlo presents, for the first time in print, an astonishing lost archive of one of the twentieth century's most revered artists. Hidden from view for over half a century, this richly illustrated, intimate portrait overflows with fascinating details about Kahlo's romances, friendships, and business affairs during a three-decade period, beginning in the 1920s when she was a teenager and ending just before she died in 1954. Full of ardent desires, seething fury, and outrageous humor, Finding Frida Kahlo is a rare glimpse into an exuberant and troubled existence: A vivid diary entry records her sexual encounter with a woman named Doroti; a painted box contains eleven stuffed hummingbirds, concealed beneath a letter in which she laments her discovery that her husband, Diego Rivera, had been monstrously dissecting 'these beautiful creatures' to extract an aphrodisiac; an altered French medical book describes the pain she was suffering from the amputation of her right leg, written by Kahlo upon pages that illustrate an amputation technique; a letter to a friend expresses her loneliness, and a simple request for coconut candies. Frida Kahlo never wrote an autobiography. Instead, she left behind a much more complex material universe. Finding Frida Kahlo offers scholars and fans alike an opportunity to examine firsthand Kahlo's secret world and draw their own conclusions about how she imagined her place in it.

We are living in a golden age of self-expression. The explosion of user-created content on blogs and social networking sites moved Time magazine to name 'You' their 2006 person of the year. But while we may be spending a lot more time in virtual worlds, we have not lost the urge to make our physical world more meaningful. By leaving art and ideas in public places, you can affect someone's day change their mood or their mind and maybe even change the world in the process!

The Guerilla Art Kit shows how small artistic acts can start a revolution. Keri Smith, noted author of Living Out Loud and the blog Wish Jar Journal, uses her unique drawing and handwriting style to help anyone find and release their inner artist or activist. This visually exciting activity book full of step-by-step exercises, cut-out projects, sticker ideas, and more has both fun assignments and handy tips to help you unleash your creative energy into the streets, where you can really make an impact. From the quick exercises leaving books for strangers to find, chalking quotes on the sidewalk to the more involved making a 'wish tree,' guerilla gardening, or making your own stencils The Guerilla Art Kit contains everything you need to put your message out into the world.