Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye [Hardcover]

Tony Angell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0295989270 | ISBN-13: 978-0295989273 | Publication Date: July 15, 2009 | Edition: 1

For nearly fifty years Tony Angell has used Puget Sound's natural diversity as his artist's palette. In this book, he describes the living systems within the Sound and shares his observations and encounters with the species that make up the complex communities of the Sound's rivers, tidal flats, islands, and beaches: the fledging flight of a young peregrine, an otter playfully herding a small red rockfish, the grasp of a curious octopus.

Angell goes on to explain the methods he uses in his art. The shapes, movements, patterns, and even temperatures and smells that he experiences in the field are all brought to bear on his work. His drawings bring clarity to his visual and emotional memories, and his sculptures allow him to approach a memory from many directions and retain that memory in his hands. In all of his work, he lets the passion and excitement of his discoveries drive his artistic expression.

Angell augments his descriptions of the wildlife of the Puget Sound region and his working methods with two appendices listing guides and references to this and other regions by other artists and naturalists. These resources not only put wildlife viewers in touch with the times and places to view particular species, but also speak to the patience and willingness to be delighted that are necessary to increasing the understanding of our wild neighbors.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If this were a 'mere' coffee-table book showcasing Angell's birds, it would still be magnificent. But it is, first, a celebration of the Sound . . . and second, an inquiry into the artist s craft. There may be more visual artists who can write than writers who can paint or draw, but Angell is exceptional both as an observer of nature and at his own mind and hands work." ---Living Bird

If you've lived here for any length of time, you ve seen an Angell sculpture: in a public place, an art gallery or a private home. Puget Sound Through an Artist s Eye chronicles 40 years of the Seattle-area artist s sculptures and paintings of the birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and undersea life of our region. It s a summing up to date of Angell s career and a testament to the tenacity and inventiveness he draws on to pursue his quarry. And it s a cri de coeur for a halt to the degradation of one of the most beautiful and fecund places on Earth. As with the best coffee-table books, you can read the narrative straight through, or stop and linger over Angell s marvelous way with marble and chlorite, limestone and serpentine. This is a keepsake book -- a testament to an artist s passion for his work and for Puget Sound, his home and his muse. ---Seattle Times

From the Back Cover

"To encounter Tony and the plenteous generation of sculptures that have come to cold yet fiery life is literally to see a world in the making. . . . And so we have, in the mighty circle of work that Tony Angell has bestowed on us across the past four decades, an orb of double importance. An everlasting sense of the Puget South country that is nature's blessedly varied kingdom, and within that a brilliantly preserved wingdom." - From the Foreword by Ivan Doig

"A wonderful book as Angell's superlative sculpture and exquisite drawings demonstrate how fine art can build a bridge of understanding to an extraordinary and still wild area that remains an important repository of some of the natural capital we depend on." - Paul Ehrlich, President of the Center for Conservation Biology and Bing Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University

"Puget Sound is not just a description of a geography, it is a place. Tony Angell's book brings home that place in all its mystery and splendor. This is why the people who live in the Pacific Northwest love it." - William Ruckelshaus, two-time former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Chairman of Puget Sound Partnership Leadership Council, and Strategic Director of the Madrona Venture Group

"Tony Angell's sculpture is iconic. It transcends its subject matter in a way that all great works of art must do to resonate through space and time. A thousand years from now, people will still be awestruck by the power and beauty of these sculptures. Let us hope that the wildlife that inspired them will be with us as well." - Robert McCracken Peck, Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia and author of A Celebration of Birds: The Life and Art of Louis Agassiz Fuertes

"In many ways, Tony Angell is Puget Sound. Through his writing, sculpture, and drawings, he artistically captures the Puget Sound environs better than anyone. If you have an interest in our region's birds, mammals, and marine life, dramatically depicted, then this is the book for you. Tony illustrates, explains, and provides a full understanding of each. This book is a 'must read' for all of us." - Ralph Munro, former Washington Secretary of State

"Finding one's own voice, one's own authenticity, is perhaps the highest goal an artist seeks. In my estimation, Tony Angell has done this through his observation skills of nuances in the natural world and transformed them into shapes removed of all excess, leaving a form in pure, silent power." - George Carlson, Sculptor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press; 1 edition (July 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295989270
• ISBN-13: 978-0295989273
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 8.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #312,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Artist and Naturalist, December 14, 2009

By 

Stephen J. Bodio (Magdalena New Mexico) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye (Hardcover)

Sculptor Tony Angell's Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye is like a four-decade diary by an artist-naturalist carved in stone. His characters are the myriad denizens of this rich ecosystem - petrels, plovers, cormorants, gulls, falcons, the occasional otter; perhaps above all the omnipresent raven, "under whose wisely wrought wings everything prospers", as Ivan Doig writes.

He starts his journey in the high country and its valleys, with Steller's jays and owls and forest hawks in winged stone. An eagle is rendered in black chlorite, as are many raptors, to bring out form without the distraction of color, but snow geese and ermine are done in appropriate white alabaster and creamy marble. As he reaches the estuary falcons appear, one peregrine joined by a wave to a dense flock of plover, an incredible tour de force in bronze. Cliffs and islands bring fish, loons, Bald eagles, guillemots, and as he reaches open water, orcas, murrelets (who link back to the forests where they nest) and scoters. He explains their habits, their links, their changing fortunes. Incredibly, most of these creatures, despite their different shapes and textures, are wrought from stone, though he adds sharp-edged ink drawings to show striking plumage or the structure -!- of a feeding frenzy.

For sculpture he was blessed by good public access to steatite, chlorite, and marble. Blank stone and Native artists pointed him toward his beloved ravens, almost his totemic bird. ("My many years in the company of ravens, however, have probably had the greatest influence on my work...") However fine his ink-line birds, sculpture seems to say more to him. " `Try to move or shape me', it seem to say. Some of my fascination comes from knowing something initially unyielding can be coaxed into revealing the forms, patterns, and colors within it." He then proceeds to show us, step by step, a white gyrfalcon being "released" from the marble.
Watching, drawing, picking the medium, all contribute to Angell's art. Could we be losing the opportunity to have more artists like him? As he says "My time spent with my subjects has also involved direct handling of them. Given today's regulations on keeping wild animals it was fortunate for me that as a child there were few such restrictions..." It would be a shame if Angell's generation were, as the book title says, "the last children in the woods." We cannot love what we do not know.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars You don't have to be from Puget Sound, December 4, 2009

By 

Bert Bender "eats books and fish" (California's Central Coast) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye (Hardcover)

You don't have to know much about Puget Sound to appreciate this beautiful new book by the Seattle author-sculptor-painter Tony Angell, but reading it and enjoying the wonderful collection of his drawings and photos of his stunning sculpture might make you want to head there immediately. If you do head to Seattle or almost anyplace around Puget Sound, it will be hard to miss the many bronze or stone works by Angell that grace many public spaces there. With those many works Angell has drawn public attention and admiration to the multitude of life forms that inhabit that area, from terns and ravens to salamanders and river otters. But all these animals come alive in the book and make you want to touch them or walk around them. Some of the stone pieces, particularly, seem almost a part of the area's geological record--like a beautiful pair of flounders sculpted in serpentine. Angell's prose will take you into the Sound country, too, and you can get a sense of how well-wedded his art and language are by checking out a dreamy piece (on page 5) that he titles "Raven Composing a Poem."

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding!, December 12, 2009

By 

John Schoenherr "Grizzly Jack" (Wilds of New Jersey) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye (Hardcover)

This is a great collection of Tony Angell's work. He's obviously a man of considerable talent and enormous energy; the number and quality of his works attest to this. And versatility, as his drawings show. I'm particularly impressed with his Feeding Frenzy from above and below, among others.
This is not of appeal to inhabitants only of Puget Sound. It's too universal for that.

This is a top addition to my library.