“Roll-up-your-sleeves advice on throwing pottery, growing dahlias, cooking her tried-and-true recipes, and everything in between.” —Martha Stewart Living “Suited to any type of creative, offering up lessons on inspiration and creativity that are sure to bring out your inner talent.” —House Beautiful, Best New Design Books What makes a creative life? For an artist like Frances Palmer, it’s knitting all of one’s passions—all of one’s creativity—into the whole of life. And what an inspiration it is. A renowned potter, an entrepreneur, a gardener, a photographer, a cook, a beekeeper, Palmer has over the course of three decades caught the attention not only of the countless people who collect and use her ceramics but also of designers and design lovers, writers, and fellow artists who marvel at her example. Now, in her first book, she finally tells her story, in her own words and images, distilling from her experiences lessons that will inspire a new generation of makers and entrepreneurs. Life in the Studio is as beautiful and unexpected as Palmer’s pottery, as breathtakingly colorful as her celebrated dahlias, as intimate as the dinners she hosts in her studio for friends and family. There are insights into making pots—the importance of centering, the discovery that clay has a memory. Strategies for how to turn a passion into a business—the value to be found in collaboration, what it means to persevere, how to develop and stick to a routine that will sustain both enthusiasm and productivity. There are also step-by-step instructions (for throwing her beloved Sabine pot, growing dahlias, building an opulent flower arrangement). Even some of her most tried-and-true recipes. The result is a portrait of a unique artist and a singularly generous manual on how to live a creative life.

By examining the studios and studio-houses used by British artists between 1900 and 1940, this book reveals the ways in which artists used architecture - occupying and adapting Victorian studios and commissioning new ones. In doing so, it shows them coming to terms with the past, and inventing different modes of being modern, collaborating with architects and influencing the modernist style. In its scrutiny of the physical surroundings of artistic life during this period, the book sheds insight into how the studio environment articulated personal values, artistic affinities and professional aspirations. Not only does it consider the studio in terms of architectural design, but also in the light of the artist's work and life in the studio, and the market for contemporary art. By showing how artists navigated the volatile market for contemporary art during a troubled time, the book provides a new perspective on British art.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage • “Life has questions. They have answers.” —The New York Times Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home—at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve. In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.

The legendary singer reflects on his career, the recurring themes in his life, and the inspiration that shapes his music and his art, in a musical memoir enhanced by reproductions of his own artwork and a CD containing some of the author's favorite songs.

Although established over a hundred years ago, Hollywood movie studios still present themselves with a utilitarian modesty despite the star-spangled hype of their publicity machines. For employees, studio life offers a straightforward existence that overflows with all the tangible qualities of small-town America. Bicycles float cheerful worker bees to the mill and mailroom. At noon, carpenters and secretaries unite in the commissary where table-hopping percolates between studio hairdressers and studio brass. In a volume of personal essays and photographs, Rob Easterla details his ascent from nowhere to somebody in the Hollywood landscape as he clawed his way to the middle while crossing paths with celebrities such as James Spader, Debbie Reynolds, and Julie Andrews. While leading others into the trenches at Paramount Pictures, NBC, and Twentieth Century Fox, Easterla reveals the magic and horror of studio life from 1980 to 2011 as he labored within a world where normal rules did not apply and thick-skinned, fearless studio folk upheld a “can-do” attitude, even during the most challenging times. Through it all, Easterla reminds us that making movies is a singular art form that recruits only the most passionate, eager dreamers to participate in the process. Studio Life is a volume of personal essays that reveal a man’s escapades as he galloped onto a Paramount Pictures lot in the 1980s and began an unforgettable adventure.

Perweiler uses to demonstrate his professional techniques. Perweiler explains in detail the innovative methods and strikingly graphic arragements that make his work so widely admired by art directors and other photographers, and his examples include outstanding photographs of food, cosmetics, jewelry, and other small products.

It's a rare graphic designer who hasn't contemplated setting up his or her own studio. It's part of a designer's DNA to want to own and run a studio. Many do, while others spend a lifetime wondering if they should. But where does the ambitious designer go for advice and guidance? Who better than the founders of some of the best design studios in the world? Tony Brook and Adrian Shaughnessy conduct penetrating interviews with a group of visionary graphic designers who have formed and run landmark international design studios. In a series of candid and revealing interviews, manyof the leading figures in contemporary graphic design reveal the secrets behind creating a vibrant studio culture.

In the last years of his life Paul Cézanne produced a stunning series of watercolors, many of them sill lifes. Still Life with Blue Pot is one of these late masterpieces that is now in the collection of the Getty Museum. In Cézanne in the Study: Still Life in Watercolors, Carol Armstrong places this great painting within the context of Cezanne’s artistic and psychological development and of the history of the genre of still life in France. Still life—like the medium of watercolor—was traditionally considered to be “low” in the hierarchy of French academic paintings. Cézanne chose to ignore this hierarchy, creating monumental still-life watercolors that contained echoes of grand landscapes and even historical paintings in the manner of Poussin—the “highest” of classical art forms. In so doing he changed his still lifes with new meanings, both in terms of his own notoriously difficult personality and in the way he used the genre to explore the very process of looking at, and creating, art. Carol Armstrong’s study is a fascinating exploration of the brilliant watercolor paintings that brought Cézanne’s career to a complex, and triumphant, conclusion, The book includes new photographic studies of the Getty’s painting that allow the reader to encounter this great watercolor as never before, in all of its richness and detail.

As a young Jewish boy growing up in Vienna, Georgia, Abe Orovitz could never have predicted the twists and turns his life would take. Many years later, as retired film director with more than thirty movies to his credit, Vincent Sherman is no less surprised when he looks back on that life. In Studio Affairs he retraces his life with candor and enthusiasm. Sherman discusses the details of his three-year relationship with Joan Crawford, his inadvertent connection with the death of Bette Davis's second husband, and his poignant romantic involvement with Rita Hayworth. Providing counterpoint to these liaisons is the love and devotion of Sherman's wife, Hedda, who accepted her husband's occasional infidelities as part and parcel of his career. Studio Affairs provides an inside look at the motion picture industry during the heyday of the studio system by one who worked his way from nearly starving actor and playwright to respected director. In effect, the book serves as a primer on the art of film directing. Sherman quickly developed a reputation of being a consummate rewrite artist, able to take whatever assignment given him and turn it into a first rate motion picture. His skill at reworked scripts led him to bigger and bigger projects, even as the salary set by his long-term contract with Warner Brothers remained below that of most of his colleagues. Though not originally signed to direct, when asked to do so he drew on his experience putting together productions at summer camps across the "borscht circuit" in upstate New York. Like so many talented individuals in Hollywood during the 1950s, Sherman was targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee, owing in part to his active support of the WPA Theatre project in New York two decades previous. Time spent on the lesser known gray list kept him out of work for several years. Eventually, he again enjoyed some critical success, but after the demise of the studio system life was never quite the same. The quintessential "studio director" ended his career directing for television. Vincent Sherman's path from Georgia to southern California is compelling, and his legendary talent for good storytelling makes the book impossible to put down.

MY STILL LIFE ARTText & Paintings by Richard SchmidIn this book, Richard Schmid invites us to enjoy his life-long affair with still life paintings. Although he has painted a wide range of other subjects, such as landscapes, marine paintings, portraits, figurative works etc., it was still life painting that allowed him the privacy and unlimited time to develop and fine-tune his techniques and color perception. But more to the point of Still Life, Schmid shows us how even the most ordinary things can be transformed into objects of astonishing beauty and sometimes of surprising complexity. He explains that the objects in a Still Life need not be thrilling in and of themselves, but rather it is the way they are painted that makes them so compelling. Also, the many close-up images reveal the different ways he uses his palette knives and brushes. As you turn the pages of this book, you will realize how fortunate you are to have a master of painting share his efforts and achievements in capturing not only the world he sees, but sometimes the world of his imagination as well.