Description
Watson-Guptill Publications, Published 2002. Paperback, 128 pp.; 26 cm; illustrated with 143 color and 5 black-and-white illustrations.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition. Glossy pictorial paper covers with mild shelf wear, small nick to paper at top of rear hinge, light bumping and creasing to edges and corners. Binding tight, pages clean and unmarked. Freeman builds miniature rooms, structures and landscapes almost entirely from found objects, salvage and modified kit components: matchboxes, cigar boxes, a World War II ammunition box, shower door pulls turned into subway platforms, disposable lighters cut down into turnstiles. The text runs from gathering materials through choosing a subject and style to the aesthetic principles of working at one-twelfth scale, then into project technique for walls, floors, windows, linens, landscaping and seasonal effects. Her own work ranges from documentary portraits of real interiors (a Hollywood television studio, the Felissimo townhouse in Manhattan) to opera sets for Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute and three-dimensional reconstructions of paintings by Van Gogh, Matisse and Hopper. Work by ten other miniaturists is included, among them Susan Leopold, David Levinthal, Victoria and Richard MacKenzie-Childs, Charles Mingus III, Tim Prythero and Alan Wolfson. Foreword by Roger Rosenblatt, adapted from his November 1999 television essay on Freeman for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Cover photograph is a detail of Freeman's miniature reconstruction of Van Gogh's bedroom. Contents: Foreword, "Unoccupied Rooms" by Roger Rosenblatt; Preface, On Taking Enormous Pleasure in Creation (and in Tiny Things); Introduction, From the Infinite to the Infinitesimal; Part I, Getting Started: To See a World in a Grain of Sand; Part II, The Creative Process: Aesthetic Principles in Miniature; Part III, Pass the Glue: Things to Make, and Making Things; Sources; Bibliography and Suggested Reading; Contributing Artists; Index.