ALL-AROUND-THE-HOUSE ART AND CRAFT BOOK

The catch-all title fails to convey what's presented here, namely craft that is art. Mrs. Wittenberg is herself an artist who practices what she teaches, the creation of compositions--pictorial and sculptural and multi-mixed--using readily available materials to unique aesthetic advantage. There are no pine cone or pipe cleaner figures, and no practical use for most of the finished products although some of the information--how to concoct, keep and model ""kitchen clay""; how to make masks from balloons; how to fashion landscape dioramas from premolded shipping forms--may be applied to other projects. The last indicates one of the features of the book, its exploitation of new items. There are all sorts of sculptures and reliefs, collages and mosaics, prints and paintings and ""dyeings"": the range from the sublime--pure art--to the amusing is represented by the Tinfoil Engraving and the Calcium Collage, the latter made from bones (animal) and shell(fish). It's as up-to-date as optical illusions, as solid as the sculpture chipped from plaster cast in a dairy carton, and altogether with clear instructions and illustrations a treasury for the teacher and an impetus for the child.