A striking display of Native American pottery that conveys the medium’s exquisite artistry and fascinating cultural context.
Rich colors, complex textures, and finely wrought traditional motifs abound in this luminous catalogue.
Husband-and-wife collectors Isaacs and Swartz showcase contemporary Native American artists inspired by ancient pottery finds and grouped by the styles of different pueblos. The pieces include Dora Tse-Pé’s San Idelfonso Pueblo jar, with its characteristic black-matte-on-black-gloss finish and carvings of a water serpent; Jacob Koopee’s Hopi-Tewa jar, with its mottled brown-to-reddish earth tones and abstracted bird figures; an Acoma Pueblo jar by Frederica Antonio, with dazzling geometric swirls of black-and-white spots setting off spindly, hump-backed, Kokopelli flute-players climbing a cliff-wall staircase; a Jemez Pueblo vase by Sharon Sarracino that features a brightly hued figure of a kachina (a deified ancestral soul) in the guise of a butterfly maiden; and Deldrick Cellicion’s Zuni Pueblo wedding vase, which has dual bride-and-groom spouts and a big, bold, black lizard sporting white-and-orange spots climbing the exterior to symbolize marital bliss. Interspersed are biographical snippets on the artists, engaging background information on the history of Native American pueblos and their suffering at the hands of white authorities, and engrossing details of traditional pottery techniques. (Toward “the end of firing, the potter smothers the fire with fine manure, thus preventing oxygen from reaching the pots and turning them black.”) A concluding chapter offers novice pottery collectors useful tips both practical and spiritual. (“If it doesn’t speak to you, move on.”) Isaacs and Swartz write scintillating appreciations of these artworks in subtle, evocative prose; Wilfred Garcia’s vase, featuring a mouth styled as a building, “has a simplicity and purity that cannot be found elsewhere in the Acoma Pueblo,” they write. “The mouth provides a soaring cathedral-like effect, giving the piece a monumental, contemporary look.” Kviatkovska’s color photographs effectively demonstrate the visual impact of these well-chosen pieces.
A striking display of Native American pottery that conveys the medium’s exquisite artistry and fascinating cultural context.Pub Date: April 14, 2026
ISBN: 9798295542626
Page Count: 98
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 18, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2026
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
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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