Up to No Good is a collection of hysterical stories from grown men about the havoc they wreaked when they were boys. Nothing is sacred in this collection that makes Eddie Haskall look like a goody two shoes--terrified nuns, electric fences, science classes gone bad--the list goes on and on. The storytellers are purportedly "perfectly decent grown men," although judging from these tales that's hard to believe. It's impossible to flip through the pages without remembering some of your own pranks--and punishments--and cringing at the thought of the poor adults who had to grin and bear it. For all the former bad boys who've been ensconced in corner offices and carpool caravans across the country, here's a great way to jog a heretofore selective memory and recall a time when gross was good and mischief was there for the making.
Katharine Harmon has produced more than a dozen titles such as Blackstocks Collections: The Drawings of an Artistic Savant and is the author of several books, including You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination. She manages Tributary Books,Ea book development company in Seattle.
Maps can be simple tools, comfortable in their familiar form.
Or they can lead to different destinations: places turned upside down or inside out, territories riddled with marks understood only by their maker, realms connected more to the interior mind than to the exterior world. These are the places of artists' maps, that happy combination of information and illusion that flourishes in basement studios and downtown galleries alike. It is little surprise that, in an era of globalized politics, culture, and ecology, contemporary artists are drawn to maps to express their visions. Using paint, salt, souvenir tea towels, or their own bodies, map artists explore a world free of geographical constraints.
Katharine Harmon knows this territory. As the author of our best-selling book You Are Here, she has inspired legions of new devotees of imaginative maps. In The Map as Art, Harmon collects 360 colorful, map-related artistic visions by well-known artists--such as Ed Ruscha, Julian Schnabel, Olafur Eliasson, Maira Kalman, William Kentridge, and Vik Muniz--and many more less-familiar artists for whom maps are the inspiration for creating art. Essays by Gayle Clemans bring an in-depth look into the artists' maps of Joyce Kozloff, Landon Mackenzie, Ingrid Calame, Guillermo Kuitca, and Maya Lin. Together, the beautiful reproductions and telling commentary make this an essential volume for anyone open to exploring new paths.
