Customer Reviews

Guyana

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A note to the buyer: This is not a novella or a novel by Katherine Dunn, author of "Geek Love." It is a collection of photographs by another artist with text written by Dunn. I have not read the book personally, but I have looked at her online bio and confirmed this. I give it five stars by default, as I have no real idea of its contents, only that a man took pictures of Guyana and Dunn commented on them.

The pictures were very lovely, but since I didn't read the description of what I was purchasing, I expected a work of literature. It was a nice book to flip through the pages, I did enjoy it.

Rockman's art of the natural world (and of the natural world interacting with humankind's presence) is astounding -- loaded with information, carefully textured, sort of slick upon first glance...glossy and full of surfaces. However, these aren't fantasy creatures off some 1970's album cover, they're birds and bugs and leaves doing what they do, eating and flying and propagating, dripping with color, full of pollen, fecund and rich and disturbing.

His work messes with my head. In a good way.

Anyway.

This book was spun off a 6 week trip the artist made to Guyana in 1994, following in the steps of Darwin and Beebe and other naturalists who, apparently, did important field work in Guyana.

Contents

- Introduction
- Excerpt of William Beebe prose
- about 65 paintings, watercolors, and drawings including some large fold-out pages; drawings executed using "mud, raw sewage, and river water" (!)
- Essay by Katherine Dunn

It was awesome! I loved it! These funny illistrations were classic