An absolute tour de force and a must-read for any aspiring artist.
A Canadian jade sculptor recalls his life and work in this remarkable memoir by Sopel (Sopel: Alluring Presence, 2012).
There is a perceived esotericism surrounding the art of sculpture, particularly when it comes to gemstones. How did the sculptor go about acquiring the precious material? How did the artist “see” the finished work in the mother rock? In this memoir, Sopel, whose work is owned by the Aga Khan and the Duke and Duchess of Westminster, among others, explains his artistic practice and the journey that led him to become a world-class artist. The memoir opens at high octane, recalling the moment when Sopel jumped from a helicopter into a remote location in British Columbia. After discovering the jade mine he was searching for, he was immediately confronted by its owner and his shotgun. Attitudes changed when he revealed his identity as a jade sculptor from Vancouver. This dramatic opening sets the effervescent, enthralling tone for the memoir, which examines Sopel’s early life and a battle with dyslexia, his gravitation toward artistic practices, his time in art school, and the events that motivated him to progress from being an artist sold in high-end tourist shops to one sold in very high-end galleries. This is a richly textured account—Sopel explored Europe as a young man and also traveled to Asia following his success. Moreover, this is a wonderfully forthright examination of what it means to be an artist. Sopel succinctly describes his connection with his work, in this instance, his sculpture of a Buddha: “You know how it is when you first fall in love? How it’s utter joy just to see that person, just to be with them? They don’t have to do anything; they don’t have to be anything other than what they are. You just feel that love for them.” It must also be noted that working on the Buddha almost killed him. Sopel’s dedication to his art is palpable, and his direct, no-nonsense approach to writing proves inspirational: “Being an artist isn’t an excuse for being poor, or laid back, or stoned. Being an artist is never an excuse for anything. An artist makes art. Period.” Written with the transparent desire to encourage others to “celebrate their own nonverbal strengths,” this is surely one of the most motivating, surprising, and utterly endearing memoirs written by a contemporary artist.
An absolute tour de force and a must-read for any aspiring artist.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-989161-00-5
Page Count: 231
Publisher: Hasmark Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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