Rock Candy by Femke Hiemstra

View a video preview and images from the book.

I've been a fan of Hiemstra's work for some time now. Needless to say, I was ecstatic to see that she was releasing a book and I finally got a copy this month for my birthday!

Kirsten Anderson's introductory essay sets the tone, preparing the viewer for the strange combination of childlike whimsy and subtle horror that marks Hiemstra's work. Each image presents a mysterious narrative that demands to be puzzled over. Content aside, the technical proficiency of Hiemstra's paintings and drawings is pretty amazing. Everything appears just so, not a single mark out of place.

Despite its small size, you really get a feel for the amount of detail that goes into Femke Hiemstra's work (still, I kind of wish this book was HUGE just so the images could be inspected more closely). Many of the spreads include a full-page image with a close-up on the preceding or following page. There are also quite a few spreads from Hiemstra's sketchbook, which fit in nicely with the finished pieces since on any given sketchbook page you're apt to find a little thumbnail or character sketch that was incorporated into one of the finished works in the book.

The book is also beautifully designed and edited. From the die-cut cover to the carefully chosen type (including hand-drawn type by Hiemstra), each aspect of the book's design was created with the utmost attention to detail. If you have any interest in pop surrealism, low brow art, or just plain good looking books, definitely pick up a copy of Rock Candy.

Tigerbuttah: A Hand-Painted All Ages Story Inspired by Golden Books

Becky Dreistadt is the creator of Tiny Kitten Teeth, a beautiful (and adorable) hand-painted web-comic. Her Golden Books-inspired project features Tigerbuttah, "a little tiger who doesn’t know much about life yet." He is featured weekly in single-paneled comics on her site. You can see more of Becky's work at her deviantArt page.

There are only 15 days left to make a pledge for this project. It sort of slipped from my mind for a few weeks, but I suddenly remembered it and made my $15 pledge today. The project has already reached its goal of $5,000 but additional funds will be used to print more copies of the book and increase their distribution.

Click below for more info about the project--a $15 donation gets you a PDF of her mini-comic "Little Beaky" as well as a copy of the book when it's printed.



P.S.
Happy New Year!

The Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini

This post is not about a book I've read or am reading, but a book I read about and would love to see in person. I'm currently reading A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel. He discusses "picture reading" in one chapter and mentions a book by Luigi Serafini entitled The Codex Seraphinianus. I found quite a few nice scans of pages on an ebay listing (and I'm sure a google search would yield plenty of results), but these images are from an article in The Believer: The Codex Seraphinianus.

(click to see them bigger)

Manguel writes about how the publisher he worked for received a strange parcel in 1978, one that contained the pages of Luigi Serafini's book:

The accompanying letter explained that the author, Luigi Serafini, had created an encyclopedia of an imaginary world along the lines of a medieval scientific compendium: each page precisely depicted a specific entry, and the annotations, in a nonsensical alphabet which Serafini had also invented during two long years in a small apartment in Rome, were meant to explain the illustrations' intricacies. Ricci [the aforementioned publisher for whom Manguel was working], to his credit, published the work in two luxurious volumes with a delighted introduction by Italo Calvino; they are one of the most curious examples of an illustrated book I know. Made entirely of invented words and pictures, the Codex Seraphinianus must be read without the help of a common language, through signs for which there are no meanings except those furnished by a willing and inventive reader.

Monsters by Klaus Haapaniemi

I found this book on the clearance cart at Broad Street Books in Middletown, CT. For a mere $1 I bought it and this little gem was mine. It really is a very "sweet" book, like a piece of candy. Colorful, with a hard shell and rounded corners. I was delighted by the fanciful illustrations inside and that is primarily why I bought it.

Monsters is a small collection of illustrations by Finnish illustrator Klaus Haapaniemi. Sprinkled among the illustrations are little blocks of text written by Finnish author Rosa Liksom. According to the back of the book, their illustrations and writing "[channel] the wild beauty of the Scandinavian landscape." Having never experienced the Scandinavian landscape for myself, I can't attest to their success. However, both Haapaniemi and Liksom weave a luscious world of cold and warmth, slick ice and rough sand, populated by fantastic plants and otherworldly creatures.

Overall, I think this is a beautiful little book full of fantastic illustrations. However, I was unimpressed by the main accompanying story by Rosa Liksom. The title story "Monsters" made no sense to me, even when I read it as magical realism. Each paragraph seems like a collection of haphazard descriptions, puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together. Halfway through the story a character named Ilmari appears out of nowhere and the other characters seem to disappear, as though another story has started. I thought the writing was quite beautiful at times, but it seemed to flounder alongside the illustrations, like the author was attempting to "keep up" with Haapaniemi's art. I think the pairing of art + writing might have been more successful with short poems or perhaps a series of very short stories (such as the tiny story at the end, "Tampere").