Customer Reviews

Kindling: 12 Removable Prints

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Length:: 0:11 Mins

Kindling is also the name of the exhibition James Jean held earlier in 2009. This poster book contains a selection of those works. They are all personal, non-commissioned pieces.

The book itself is pretty big at about 20 inches diagonal. There are 12 high quality prints on white cardboard, each easily detachable. I guess this format is chosen so that people can frame them or just paste them on walls.

Speaking of framing artwork, I met a guy who had a gallery of James Jean art at his home. This was while we were sitting on the floor queuing for the James Jean panel at San Diego Comic Con 2009. Seeing the copy of Kindling in my hand, he asked which was my favourite piece, and proceeded to show me his gallery on his iPhone. Now that's what I call a James Jean collector!

My favourite piece is the one with the butterfly head doing makeup in from of the mirror. That's the kind of style I like about his art -- mixing unworldly imagination with fine art. This is perhaps what makes his work so unique. He has won six Eisner Awards for the best cover artist from 2004 to 2009. That's every year consecutively. It's an amazing achievement considering how many great artists are out there.

This book is a worthy collection for any collector. My recommendation is to get it now before it goes out of print, like many of his older books.

(More pictures are available on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

These prints from James Jean's show of the same name are outstanding examples of his fine art. I was already a fan and these only solidify it more so. They are large (12x16) and sturdy prints. Worth way more than the asking price. 5 stars easily.

Wow. I mean, wow. The art is fabulous and I simply can't bring myself to remove any of the prints. This is a fantastic collection of art; a must buy!

Well if you are interested in the book, it is pretty easy to find small images of the 12 prints included so you will know what you are going to get. Anyway if you dont like any of them you should quite obviously not buy it. If, however, you enjoy James Jean's work as much as I do, you should be quite pleased with this book. I havent removed any of the prints yet (since I dont have anything to frame the one(s) we want to hang), but they are a good size, and the reproduction is quite nice.

There are some small gripes in that the multi-page (panel) paintings will have a crease in them since they are folded to fit the format. ANyway the prints are at least 11*14, and it will come in a huge box once delivered. I was pleasantly suprised since I didnt really read any of the details in the product description.

I wanted to give this product five stars. However, the high quality of the prints and the more-than-reasonable price notwithstanding, the largest print has a crease right down the middle, making it unsuitable for display. Still, this book is worth every penny, so if you're a fan of James Jean's work, buy it. You won't be disappointed, despite its one flaw.

This is an absolutely beautiful book, named after James Jean's 2008 'Kindling' exhibition. The images are fantastical with themes of childhood, dreams and fantasies playing a large part.

A3 in size, it contains 12 prints of some of my favourite James Jean works; 'Ballad' is a beautiful swirling yellow, red and blue piece with mice playing violins and banjos, 'Hide' is a teeming rabbit-warren of cabbage-headed children, 'Swan' is a delicate image of a girl and swans, and his haunting 'Hare', a ghostly grey and red portrait of an eyeless girl with a hare is a stand-out for me. Kindling also includes a gatefold print of 'Toymaker' (which ends up being 24"). Of course, this print then has a fold in the middle, but for the size and the details this then captures it is worth it.

I bought the book with the intention to frame some of the prints (at least half of them I HAVE to have on my wall), and they certainly suit this purpose, all the prints are bordered with white or striking black. However, on opening the book from it's centre tab, I found that the layout of the book as an entire work has had as much thought put into it as the prints themselves. The thread that runs from the cabbage-girl's head to a mantis, praying to a ball of yarn, on opening the book weaves through a maze, watched over by a skipping willow-tree-child. There is text along the inside of the spine pertaining to the thread; the helix thoughts of the girl. The last image is of the mantis greedily crawling over a rotted cabbage skull filled with the red thread. (Yes, James Jean has a vivid imagination and his work is often off-beat and creepy - you have been warned.) On the back of every print is a preparation sketch for the particular work, and you can see sometimes small details that have been changed in the process of developing the art.

A great deal of thought and energy has been put into making this release beautiful and meaningful to artlovers and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys James Jean's artwork.

Here is a list of the 12 works included:
Maze
Hive
Hide
Fountain 1
Fountain 2
Swan
Willow (Horse)
Toymaker
Shattered
Ballad
Hare
Vanity

You can see all of these works at James Jean's website: [...]

The collection arrives within a fancy envelope. It is quite large- about the size of A3.
The size is what's really great about it- Jean's works are so detailed, and here you can really follow all the levels of textures and details.
On a side note- when I received it, the posters were lightly glued to one another and I had to separate them carefully with a knife. I was annoyed that such high quality prints are bound in a way that might damage them.

I got really surprised when the book arrived! I didn't paid attention to the book's dimensions so I was expecting something smaller and it's pretty big! It's delicious to spend hourss looking at these amazing prints, it's a real artbook every James Jean fan must have!

I'm a fan of James Jean's art, and I bought this book hoping for some reasonably large prints I could put over my desk. I placed my order without checking the dimensions, assuming it'd be slightly larger than 8.5x11, and I was pleasantly surprised by the large size. I was also pleased by the heavyweight stock and the ease with which I could remove the prints from the book.

If you're not sure you like Jean's art and want a better view than you'll get here, his portfolio is online (I'd link it, but it looks like those get removed from reviews) and these prints are a subset of the work in the "Kindling" section.