New Books at the Library: Art Reference
By Robin Velte

Over the past two years, the Biblioteca Pública has purchased many new books on art technique, theory and history. There are new books on jewelry making, painting with watercolors and oil, bead directories, working with metal, artist trading cards, digital imaging, architecture and much more. Most of the new art books can be checked out.

Some of the new art books, however, are reference books and cannot be checked out. The reference (REF) section is bilingual and is located in the English Sala. Art books begin at Dewey Decimal number 700. Below are some of the new books you will find there. Annotations are from Ingram Book Group.

Color Design Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Color in Graphic Design: Color Design Workbook invites readers to explore color using the language of professionals. As part of the Workbook series, this book aims to present readers with the fundamentals of graphic design. It supplies tips regarding how to talk to clients about color and using color in presentations. Background information on color, such as certain cultural meanings, is also included.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists: Based on the acclaimed Oxford Dictionary of Art, this is an authoritative and up-to-date guide from ancient Greece to Western art to the present day. For this third edition, new entries have been added on younger, contemporary artists and the existing entries have been thoroughly revised and updated. With over 2,500 entries, arranged in A—(M)Z order for ease of reference, this is an ideal book for students and for anyone who enjoys visiting art galleries and exhibitions.

The Design Encyclopedia: Museum of Modern Art: This is the most comprehensive design reference guide to date. Compiled by Mel Byars in consultation with an international team of design experts, it features designers from all over the globe—(M)both legendary names and lesser-known figures. Each designer entry consists of dates, a biography, details of professional training, major works, exhibitions and awards and a bibliography. Other entries discuss firms, materials, groups and movements—(M)from Acerbis to Zuber, Bakelite to wicker, the Aesthetic movement to the Vienna Secession.

Dictionary of Art and Artists: Fully revised for its seventh edition, this comprehensive and detailed reference contains entries on major artists of the last seven centuries, short biographies of over 1,200 artists, descriptions of artistic techniques and styles, definitions of artistic movements and much more. An indispensable source of information for both artists and those interested in the arts in general.

Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape: Covering agriculture, resources, energy, communication, transportation, manufacturing and waste, this volume explores all the major ecosystems of the modern industrial world, revealing what the structures are and why they're there and uncovering beauty in unexpected places.

Morphosis: The first book to document the built work of Morphosis, one of today’s most influential architectural practices. Includes a dynamic variety of award-winning projects located around the world. Morphosis principal, Thom Mayne, is an internationally popular teacher and lecturer and considered one of the leading talents of his generation.

Rescuing Da Vinci: Hitler and the Nazis Stole Europe's Great Art; America and Her Allies Recovered It: Rescuing Da Vinci uses 460 photographs to tell the untold story of the “Monuments Men” and their discovery of more than 1,000 repositories filled with millions of items including paintings, sculpture, furniture, archives and other treasures stolen during WWII by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art: This book provides a comprehensive survey of the history and theory of decorative art. The universal human impulse to seek order and rhythm in space and time can be seen in children's play and in poetry, dance, music and architecture, and its prevalence in our every activity calls for an explanation in terms of our biological heritage.

20th Century Art Book. Following the phenomenal success of The Art Book, this book uses the same compelling formula in relation to the art of the 20th century. Includes the work of 500 artists arranged in alphabetical order, presented in full-color plates with a brief but incisive commentary. Celebrated works are shown alongside future classics.

Vitruvius on Architecture. Approximately 2,025 years ago, an aged Roman architect named Vitruvius wrote down on ten scrolls everything he knew about architecture. This work, known today as Ten Books on Architecture, is the most comprehensive architectural book written in antiquity and a seminal volume in Western culture. Vitruvius on Architecture presents a new translation of the five books most relevant to contemporary architecture and new drawings and watercolors that illustrate Vitruvius’ methods of proportion and composition.

PEN Goes to Africa
By Elizabeth Starcevic

Red dirt, tall buildings next to villas next to huts and goats. Traffic, traffic, traffic and tons of construction. Dakar is a city of three million people on the edge of the ocean. Women walk in beautiful dresses of diverse designs, some with head wraps, none with veils, their posture proud, self-confident and competent. Men wear suits, robes, or tunics; variety abounds. Dakar is a city of contrasts, a city of culture, a city of people from many other places in which one hears many languages. It is a city that is experiencing the upheaval of growth and change.

The PEN congress was held from July 4-11, 2007 in a very fancy hotel on the outskirts of town. The languages we worked in were French, English and Spanish. Translators were available for almost all of the sessions. We ate wonderfully, both Senegalese food (lots of fish, spicy rice with chicken, lamb, vegetables) and European, with divine desserts. We drank juices from hibiscus and delicious baobab as well as ginger and pineapple. PEN delegates, including James Cascaito, Lucina Kathmann and myself from San Miguel, were shepherded from meeting to meeting and from place to place by a group of young women students, mostly from Senegal, but also from Mauritania and other African countries. Each day they came to help us, speaking a variety of European languages as well as Wolof, the main language of Senegal. Most of them were attending university and their internship helping us gave them experience in the areas of tourism and international issues. They wore a uniform dress which varied each day in its design and color. The young women were intelligent, organized and helpful. The director of this group, Madame Ndiaye, was a magician who made things happen (from organizing car service, to finding seamstresses to make clothes from African cloth, to staffing book tables). All was done with a smile and the confidence that it could and would in fact be done correctly. The young women took their clues from Madame Ndiaye.

We came as writers to a country whose first president was a writer, and the land of Leopold Sédar Senghor takes his heritage seriously. We were visited by the current president, Mr. Abdoulaye Wade, who talked about his appreciation for writers and promised increased funds for libraries, literary prizes and writers’ centers. It is impressive to feel appreciated by the president of a country. On several evenings, various ministers of government feted us, often at the beautiful Douta Seck Cultural Center, where, after a group of musicians played the kora and sang traditional songs, we heard poetry from many of African PEN members. 

On our trip to Gorée Island, the point from which the Africans were sent to many lands to live and die as slaves, we stood at the edge of the ocean, touched the bars of that historic prison and cried at the horror of that history. Just in front of the slave prison was the wonderful Henriette Bathily Women’s Museum.

There was a formal session on African literature which would later be expanded upon in the Women’s Conference that was held at the end of the congress. The representatives of the African centers talked about their work to spread literacy, their use of alternate spaces to attract youth to literature and their need for greater networking and for places to publish and distribute their work. Frequent topics for women writers include polygamy, prevalent throughout Africa; female genital mutilation, practiced by both Muslim and non-Muslim populations; and early marriage for girls. The papers on the role of women writers took both historical and analytical approaches. We need to know much more about the rich literatures from all parts of Africa. The book tables were able to present only a small sample of the many types of writing that are going on at present.

As we considered resolutions in support of freedom of expression, we heard statements on the situations of writers from Afghanistan to Zambia. As we discussed the venue for the upcoming congress in 2008 (which we had proposed be in Guanajuato), we heard statements about the problems in Mexico regarding human rights. We talked, we listened, we met writers from all over the world and learned about our common and differing conditions. 

Poetry, culture, pride and confidence combined to make a better world through writing and writers. Dakar, Senegal, was the perfect place to hold the 73rd International PEN Congress.

Elizabeth Starcevic is the president of San Miguel PEN, a worldwide association of writers.