A captivating coffee-table volume that will fascinate the eye and pluck the heartstrings.
The struggle to save the charismatic wild horses of the American West animates this lavishly illustrated book that explores freedom and captivity.
Walker, a photographer, recounts her experiences with Blue Zeus, a wild stallion named for the exquisite color of his blue-gray coat. He also sports four knee-high white socks; a magnificently shaggy, wind-tossed mane; and a shock of hair that flops over his face to veil his brooding black eyes. The author, who judges him “the most beautiful stallion” she has ever seen, spent several seasons photographing Blue Zeus and his family of pinto mares and their yearlings and foals as they roamed the Red Desert Complex region of Wyoming. Her work is in part a pictorial essay on horse life. Her subjects graze, nuzzle, loll, and survey their grassy domain. Their idyll ended in 2020 when the Bureau of Land Management rounded up thousands of wild horses to clear range land for cattle. Thanks to his habit of leading his family out of approved Herd Management Areas, Blue Zeus was targeted for capture with no release. Later sections of the book relate Walker’s efforts to find Blue Zeus and his mares somewhere in the archipelago of BLM pens and arrange their adoptions by a horse sanctuary before they got sent to the slaughterhouse. The author’s homage renders the society of wild horses in vivid, evocative prose. (“Blue Zeus walked a little bit away from his family…and tried to nap in peace. First, little Fire got too close and Blue Zeus chased him away with ears pinned. Then Nike came over and he pinned his ears at her, but she was undeterred. Slowly the whole family came over, getting as close to him as possible.”) Walker’s pastorals are balanced by a gripping, intensely emotional cri de coeur against BLM roundups. (“It is a horrible feeling of helplessness: wanting to scream, throw up, as I see a horse go down or riders roping a foal and dragging it in.”) The color photographs are vibrant and glowing, posing the animals nobly against wide skies and distant mountains and conveying their fearful kineticism as they fled BLM helicopters. Wild-horse lovers will be fixated by the author’s arresting visuals and her dramatic story of equine pathos.
A captivating coffee-table volume that will fascinate the eye and pluck the heartstrings.Pub Date: March 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-578-35094-3
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Living Images by Carol Walker, LLC
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.
Celebrating a beloved artist.
Published to coincide with a major exhibition of works by British-born artist David Hockney (b. 1937) at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, this lushly illustrated volume offers a detailed overview of the artist’s life and work, along with chapters focused on his various styles and subject matter, a chronology, and a glossary of the many techniques he employed in his art, including camera lucida, computer, and video. Contributors of essays include noted art historians and curators, such as Norman Rosenthal, who edited the volume; Simon Schama; Anne Lyles; James Cahill; and François Michaud. Growing up in the north of England, Hockney was drawn to the light and sparkle that he found in Hollywood movies. When he finally arrived in Los Angeles, the sunlit landscapes inspired him, and his new sense of artistic freedom concurred with sexual freedom: As a gay man, he felt liberated from the constraints that had weighed on him in Britain, even in the “relative Bohemia” of the Royal College of Art. Essayists reflect on his artistic interests, such as landscapes, portraiture, flowers, and the opera—for which he created boldly exuberant sets—as well as on his influences and experimentation. Michaud examines the impact on Hockney of a visit to Paris in the 1970s, where he became familiar with Henri Matisse and his contemporaries from museum exhibitions. In the 1990s, visiting his mother and friends in Yorkshire, Hockney painted both outdoors and in the studio, experimenting with various media—including the photocopier and fax machine—as he worked to render the woodsy landscape. As a companion to the exhibition, the volume offers stunning reproductions of Hockney’s prolific works. Enormously popular with museumgoers, Hockney, Rosenthal exults, “transforms the ordinary and the everyday into the remarkable.”
A beautifully produced, engaging homage.Pub Date: June 3, 2025
ISBN: 9780500029527
Page Count: 328
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
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