"The Art Of The Bird: The History Of Ornithological Art Through Forty Artists"

"In days past," Chico ornithologist Roger Lederer writes, "birds were considered both symbols and predictors of events ... doves are symbols of love and peace, owls of wisdom, storks bring babies and good luck, and ravens predict death." Drawings and paintings of birds in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in the West often reflected religious symbolism.

Lederer notes that today, with a growing interest in birds in their natural habits, they have become "our most apparent connection to nature. Their songs, their colours, their freedom in the air ... constantly remind us that there is a world external to the everyday one we live in." Some contemporary bird art is scientific, as found in field guides; some is intended to evoke emotion. 

Lederer, professor emeritus of biological sciences at Chico State, captures the vast range of creation in "The Art Of The Bird: The History Of Ornithological Art Through Forty Artists" ($35 in hardcover from the University of Chicago Press; also for Amazon Kindle). It is a sumptuous coffee table book, stunningly beautiful in its many full-page reproductions. In ten mostly chronological chapters, Lederer begins with Flemish Baroque Artists (1580-1700) and concludes with living artists such as Raymond Harris-Ching and David Allen Sibley. 

Along the way we meet John James Audubon (1785-1851), who "made bird paintings famous with his life-size prints of almost 500 bird species. These are realistic to a great degree, although Audubon worked with dead specimens that he shot and mounted in a wire frame, not always in the most natural pose." Edward Lear (1812-1888) "was born in London, the twentieth of 21 children ... the first major bird artist to draw birds from life instead of skins." He also popularized the limerick.

Roger Tory Peterson (1980-1996) created the modern field guide, drawing birds to show "the most important features for identification, now called 'field marks'" (something photography might not do as well). Chico's own Janet Turner (1914-1988) is also included; her "prints were all about mood."

Here is a book that will put readers in a celebratory mood and, with the rustling of each page, stir a sense of wonder.

"Breaking In: A Smart, Quirky Heist Novel Set In The New York City Art Scene"

James Ibedson is an aspiring New York City artist whose middling-quality work can't catch a break. The critics ruthlessly hammer his latest gallery showing. The adult son of a wealthy art collector, he's filthy rich and resentful that the Art Establishment can't see beyond his money to the talent he actually has.

He is convinced that if his paintings received the attention they deserved he could hold his own against his contemporaries, artists the critics seem to fawn over simply because they have some dramatic family history. But how to get the needed notoriety? All his efforts to make a splash seem fruitless until, waking up one morning, it hits him. "For the first time in days, in weeks, in years, James Ibedson has a vision. He knows what he's going to do."

What turns out to be a tangled tale is told with aplomb by Ridge-area novelist Brian T. Marshall. "Breaking In" (available in an Amazon Kindle edition from missppelled press in Magalia; missppelled.com) is subtitled "A Smart, Quirky Heist Novel Set In The New York City Art Scene." It makes James' audacious scheme almost seem plausible.

The novel at its heart is about character, what it means to run risks not in theory but in the thick of things, when one's wealth no longer substitutes for the abandonment one feels. James' "mother had died when he was nine. He had no sister, no aunts. Just a couple of older cousins living in Ohio, or Iowa, one of those states with the vowels, who were nothing but a once-a-year photo, names on a Christmas card." As for James' father, Simon, the relationship is decidedly chilly. Marshall masterfully probes the inner workings of James' psyche.

For James' plot to succeed, he needs the help of others. Like Harry Lange, whose work in the art world is not always on the books; a guy named Raymond, no stranger to prison; and Ray's ex-girlfriend Cheryl, or "Shard," whose own talent fundamentally changes James' life. 

"Breaking In" is a funny, wise, and poignant portrait of an artist looking for acclaimwho  "discovers his soul instead."

"Open Your Studio: Nine Steps To A Successful Art Event"

Melinda Cootsona (melindacootsona.com) is a Bay Area painter and art teacher with family in Chico. Over the years she's gained experience in hosting or participating in Open Studio events; that's where the public is invited to meet the artist, see the artist's domain, and view and purchase selected works. But there's much more to it than putting out a sign that says "the artist is in!"

Cootsona has distilled her advice into a no-nonsense manual that guides the artist into the business side of things. "Open Your Studio: Nine Steps To A Successful Art Event" ($14.95 in paperback from RedDot Press; also for Amazon Kindle) "is a step-by-step guide written to encourage artists to participate in Open Studios."

It's timely help--and motivation--for those preparing for the 30th annual Chico Art Center Open Studios Art Tour (OSAT) October 21-22 and October 28-29. There's a preview exhibition October 6-29, a reception, and more (see facebook.com/CACOSAT2017).

What Cootsona wants to do is demystify the "commerce" side of art. "Selling your own art," she writes, "can be done successfully without 'selling out' or compromising your integrity."

What should the artist show? "Put your best/favorite pieces at one end and arrange them down to your least favorite. Try to be objective in looking at the quality" and then "show only your best work."

"It will hang on someone's wall and they will remember you when they see it. How much they like the art determines if they'll return. So, if you need to eliminate some of your pieces because you don't feel they are as strong, do it!" Make sure the presentation is "cohesive"; eliminate those works that don't seem to "fit" with the others.

The chapters on pricing are worth the cost of admission. Key ideas: "Never price a work according to your own emotional attachment to it"; "always be consistent with your pricing, no matter what your medium"; and "discounting your work cheapens it."

Cootsona gets into some nitty-gritty details but reminds artists to "create what you want to create and what speaks to you … people will see passion in your work."

And they will be moved.

"Kiss Of The Art Gods: Memoir Of A Sculptor"

Water and fire have marked the life journey of figurative sculptor Dan Corbin. He worked out of a studio in Chico in the 90s where he began to establish himself as a living artist who could actually make a living from his art. Represented in galleries across the country, Corbin has specialized in creating life-sized sculptures of the female form.

His work is at once industrial and sensual. "An art analogy of my new sculpture style goes as follows: Rodin meets an Australian aboriginal conceptualist, and they began having kids."

There is no straight line from growing up in the 50s on a peach orchard in the Yuba City area to becoming a successful studio artist. The intriguing and passionate story is told in "Kiss Of The Art Gods: Memoir Of A Sculptor" ($15.95 in paperback from Gatekeeper Press; also for Amazon Kindle). Corbin's website (kissoftheartgods.com) features a gallery of his work.

The great flood came in 1955, inundating the ranch, drawing a line between an idyllic family life and the unraveling of that family in the years to come. After the flood ten-year-old Dan discovered an encyclopedia article on sculpture. "Looking back now, fifty years later," he writes, "I believe something mystical happened to me on that day." "Art," he adds, "is the nearest thing we have for getting it right and keeping it real."

That leads to the Art Gods. "I believe these gods reside in our bodies, in our minds, or in our DNA as agents of cultural progress, social bonding, and peaceful change." The Art Gods give short shrift to the dilettante, to the puffed-up person who dismisses his mentors. From Reno to Hawaii, San Francisco to Chico, the lesson took a long time to learn. There were brawls, booze, babes; and typhoid fever.

At long last he listened. He saw that firing clay sculptures produced incredibly fragile work, that his art demanded a different medium. The Art Gods smiled: "When the Art Gods think you can carry the torch of social change, only then do they give you their cherished blessing."

It's a heartfelt meditation on the Art Gods reclaiming a wayward son.

New national magazine has Chico roots

Tara Grover Smith and Olav Bryant Smith both teach at Butte College. Unbowed by the mountains of papers to grade, the couple has embarked on a new creative venture with stunning results. Together they have birthed a magazine, Empirical.

The first issue is now available at Lyon Books in Chico and soon in Barnes and Noble stores across the country, with a digital version at empiricalmag.com. Calling itself "a literary and current affairs magazine with the openness and pioneering spirit of the Pacific Northwest, Empirical aspires for truth by boldly introducing thought-provoking points of view and new paradigms."

For Olav, in introducing the magazine, the philosophers William James and Alfred North Whitehead are lodestars. Both "were committed to science and applying a sharply rational and logical intellect to the data of experience, but were both concerned that empiricism not be limited in its scope. Both sought to widen the range of investigation to include all aspects of life. James and Whitehead sought, for example, to include science and religion under the same umbrella of reasonable discourse."

And so the magazine opens its doors to the political, the spiritual, and the personal. The package is gorgeous, the writing clear, passionate, sometimes controversial, but also tinged with hope. There is hope even in Michael Coyle's featured piece on the Occupy movement. Coyle, who teaches political science at Chico State University, concludes that promises of "democracy" have instead left us "scared, scared, and weak." But perhaps change can come: "Our time is now, and it is time to take to the streets."

Or bake a cake. There is a recipe for "rich and squidgy chocolate cake"; a poem by Troy Jollimore; a hugely funny reflection on the baseball Cardinals by Randall Auxier; a moving short story by Kenneth Weene.

Local environmental ethicist Randy Larsen writes about a young John Muir dropped down a hole in a wooden bucket to help his father dig a well. Muir later looked back on his father's "vice of over-industry." For Muir, as Larsen writes in a kind of coda for the magazine, "There is an inspired life to be lived if we can brush off apathy and inertia, energize ourselves and each other, and allow Nature to remind us of callings above and beyond."

Gifted San Francisco artist and writer to appear at Chico book signing

Paul Madonna's stunning pen-and-ink cityscapes appear in the comic section of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle. His drawings contain short stories, snatches of conversations, philosophical observations, forming strange juxtapositions with his intricate architectural renderings.

The weekly strip is called "All Over Coffee" (I suspect the multiple meanings are not accidental), which gave the title to Madonna's first compilation. Now he's out with a new collection of panels, "Everything Is Its Own Reward" ($27.95 in hardcover from City Lights Books), and it's a mesmerizing journey, as the author puts it, "from an introduction, into autobiography and fiction, to a climax of creative questioning, then to resolution."

Madonna will be signing copies of his books Wednesday, May 18, at 7:00 p.m. at Lyon Books in Chico.

An Afterword provides context for each of the drawings and a rationale for Madonna's project. "What was it that was its own reward? Everything was, the more I thought about it. And that was the answer to life as much as it was to making art. Anything I did had to be for the sake of doing--from getting out of bed in the morning to pursuing my grandest aspirations."

One picture shows a little trailer against a large hill. The words in the upper left: "There is, for all of us, no matter what we've mastered, something incomprehensible." Madonna points out that the pictures are not meant to illustrate the words, or vice versa. There is something more subtle going on. Humans are never depicted. Yet they are there, on every page. You just have to read them into the houses, imagine the goings-on behind the walls.

There are hints of color in the sepia renderings. One shows a dizzying view of the blue sky looking up from several apartments. And the text: "The guys who sit on my stoop, doing deals out of bass-thumping cars, they don't care if I make something today, how I phrased these lines, or if this drawing turned out the way I wanted. Every doorway in every city, every cafe, church or town hall, every profession, passion or pursuit, is its own microcosm." And so it is with each page, a delight to the eye and provocation for the mind.