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Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye

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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.

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."

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.

PUGET SOUND THROUGH AN ARTIST'S EYE, evokes magic!!!!

I feel this book to be "from and of" the inner soul of this Master Artist Tony Angell.

An artist's artist is Tony, a big man of soft nature, he whales away at solid stone, bringing forth with the blows of a carver his imagery of the wilds. His drawings and words composed, illustrate poetically our own connectedness to this world.

Obviously, a man devoted to his place of belonging. His interpretations of the rhythms and intricacies of the beloved Pacific Northwest will inspire you and move you.

So come along, and view this book and discover as you do, that you may begin to hear Tony and his chip-chip-chipping away and his evoking the life within to be unveiled in wonder.

And slowly, slowly at the great carver's hand, we may feel our own crusty exteriors fall away and reveal the magnificent beauty within, the radiant adornment that shows our full connectedness to this world.

Tony Angell will touch your soul through the Artist's Eye and his illustious Puget Sound.

Leo E. Osborne, Artist, Milkwood Studio

Long years ago a teacher scoffed my use of 'living rock' when translating a line from the Aeneid. I still remember her mocking laughter as I struggled to justify my choice of words. Would she were still alive so I might send her a copy of Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye. Never again would she doubt 'living rock', for Tony Angell has awakened, from ancient stone, lively images that swim and fly and exude a suppressed energy that almost seems to breathe life.

On page following page fluid carvings astound and delight the eye, while striking scratchboard drawings fascinate with their complexity of design. Somehow forms that have lain hidden in stone for eons awaiting the tap of a hammer, the twang of a chisel and the insight of an artist's mind, have been released at Tony's command. His sculpted pieces, combining the Inuit tradition of primitive shape with the stark simplicity of Post-Modern line, produce images that enchant.

The accompanying text reveals the sensitivity and passion this artist holds for the Puget Sound he knows and loves....loves not only with an artist's heart, but with well grounded understanding of the basic ecological structure of the area. Blessedly he does not go into spasms generated to evoke 'green guilt' in the reader. Rather his words entice a person to visit those shores, to paddle those waters and to lose one's self in the relatively untouched beauty of the Puget Sound he describes.

We know Tony not only as a young junior and senior high school athlete while growing up in Southern Californa, but also someone who was getting hands on experience over his curiousity with birds. We would invite readers to encounter then enjoy his great and subtle sense of humor displayed throughout his book. Tony can 'talk the talk' when it comes to this subject matter, and he can 'walk the walk'. E.G., I challenge the reader to not BING "Sysiphisian" after reading it in a sentence on page 71, and not come away with an appreciation of Tony's lifelong passion. We validated some of his references through other friends with similar passions in the Northwest, and Tony deserves and we are confident would appreciate your sponsorship of "Puget Sound through an artist's eye". Marge and Dick Allen

I don't buy a lot of coffee table books, but I love this one. The "Artist's Eye" of the title is more than just the eye of a superb sculptor, it's that of a naturalist with endless knowledge of the creatures he presents in ink, stone and bronze. The book overflows with photos of Tony Angell's art, with a text that makes you feel closely acquainted with his subjects --the birds and animals of the amazing Puget Sound region of Washington State. The final third of the book tells how Angell discovers the creatures hiding inside the stone, and the chip-by-chip process of "releasing" them in sculpture. Here's a guy who's worked his art professionally for more than forty years, along with a career as Director of Environmental Studies for the public schools of Washington, and as author of a half-dozen popular books on the birds and mammals of the Northwest. Most recently, he co-authored and illustrated, with ornithologist David Marzloff, the hugely successful book "In the Company of Crows and Ravens." You'll come back to "Puget Sound Through an Artist's Eye" again and again.