Brainpicker has a lovely review of South Indian printer Tara Books, which ‘gives voice to marginalized art and literature’ through its cooperatively run publishing business. The Night Life of Tress is an exemplary product. Enjoy this video of the production process and luminous finished product:

By page 400 or so I couldn’t put down China Mieville’s vibrating, seeping, crackling “Perdido Street Station” – its spell was cast and the web of wounded, brave, unearthly, mishapen characters drew me with them toward their final act. Mieville’s second novel, set on the artfully constructed continent city of New Crobuzon, is executed in [...]

During a brief family holiday along the Erie Canal last week, I had the pleasure of stopping in at the Western New York Book Arts Collaborative. What a thrill! Why? Several reasons:  Its a bright open physical space in the heart of a city ready for a rebound. Artists know what that feeling is like: [...]

I’m settling into my new role here at MIT as the IDEAS Competition coordinator. Its a great place to be – the Media Lab, Arts department, Architecture and Urban Studies – all contained within this vast engine of applied research. My role here is to support student interest in applying their ingenuity to community development [...]

Since 2005 the Global Peace Tiles Project has helped community educators use the visual arts as a way to elicit stories about HIV/AIDS from young people. These tiles are used in a variety of ways – primarily as part of large mural installations in public spaces. Recently, a number of these tiles have been integrated [...]

Nick Bantock, the celebrated illustrator, writer and yes collage artist bares some of his trade secrets in this lush volume from Chronicle Books. Nick writes it best: Imagine a young woman sitting in the accounts payable department of an Italian trading office in 1910. The afternoon is dragging interminably. She drifts into a reverie and [...]

Dan Eldon was a young photojournalist for Reuters covering the civil war in Somalia in 1992 when he was caught in a crossfire and killed. The legacy of this vibrant young man lives on in the journals he left behind. Excerpts from these journals have been beautifully reproduced along with a biography exploring Dan’s life [...]

Ever wondered what secrets the person next to you carries with them? Do you have a secret you’ve never been able to tell. Anyone? If so, the PostSecret project is for you. Sometimes whimsical, sometimes outrageous, often predictable, and always delightful. The PostSecret project was conceived by small business owner and blogger Frank Warren as [...]