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Title:
D.I.Y. Kids

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$16.95
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Summary:
All over the world, parents are raising kids to get active and embrace the 'design it yourself' spirit of homemade arts and crafts. D.I.Y. Kids encourages young readers to use basic design principles and on-hand materials to express their individuality through more than ninety imaginative projets.

Title:
Pictoplasma: the character encyclopaedia

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$79.80
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Summary:
From the worlds of drawing, graphic design and painting, Pictoplasma examines the latest tendencies in character design. Having closely coincided with the character design movement since 1999, Pictoplasma presents a new, incomparable collection of what has become the world's most popular visual language. Through playful sampling and visual remixing, these characters evade established pictorial norms, and confront the viewer directly and emotionally, regardless of cultural background. Focusing on the graphical roots of contemporary character culture, this volume examines the essential qualities that empower these reduced character depictions with an universal, anthropomorphic appeal.

Title:
Dot dot dash

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$77.00
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Summary:
Dot Dot Dash! is brought to you by the editors of Pictoplasma and Pictoplasma 2. Expanding on the widely popular subject of contemporary character design, this definitive volume showcases an up-to-date survey of the personalities and characters that have entered the third dimension. Vinyl figures, plush dolls, designer toys and action figures can be seen as a new movement in contemporary design, art and popular culture. Interest in these three-dimensional toys have surged, drawing on pop culture, graffiti and visual art. The new-generation-characters appear cute, cuddly and innocuous at first, but are often elicit, subversive and politically incorrect. Not intended for child's play, they are highly esteemed by teens and adults alike. Each is a work of art, often created by world-famous artists and many of them are produced independently in limited editions and become highly sought after collectibles. A recent trend of character applications aspiring from inherent crossovers of the character and art worlds is also taking form in sculptures and objects, creating a new art market where artists are progressively moving beyond the boundaries of the gallery and extending their work to a disparate audience. This voluptuous volume exhibits the expansive scope of designs and objects in the ultimate compilation of contemporary character design.

Title:
Kim Gordon Chronicles Vol. 2, Too young to be a hippy

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$24.00
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Summary:
In Chronicles Vol. 2, Kim Gordon brings together some of her most personal drawings from recent years--drawings that she made for her daughter, Coko, for her nieces, for her partner Thurston Moore, and friends. This second book of Gordon's work from Nieves goes beyond the photographic glimpses of Gordon the musician, which were pictured in Chronicles Vol. 1, providing the reader access to her most intimate world. This volume features drawings, collages and paintings, most of which have never before been published.

Title:
Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!

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$12.00
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Summary:
In "AGITATE! AGITATE! AGITATE!" Cj Reay of Black Lodge Press reflects upon their relationship to DIY print culture, zines, and the politics of art production. Reay lays out a history of DIY print and the people's press: from chapbooks produced during the French revolution to the zines made in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, while outlining their own personal engagement with reading, music, and art that agitates, angers, and incites action. For Cj Reay, growing up in rural Northern England, the inherently anti-capitalist nature of DIY culture provided a connection to radical working class movements and the politics of anarchy: "living breathing movements of resistance and joy and complexity and disappointment and boundless optimism.'" Co-published with Black Lodge Press, "AGITATE! AGITATE! AGITATE!" is a zine about the beauty and radical power of creating art without permission.

Title:
Seeds for a story

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$12.00
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Summary:
In this artist book, Derya Akay explores the slipperiness of language, identity, gender, food, and culture, through a kaleidoscope of images, layered together in a scrapbook-like style collection. Children's drawings, scribbles, textures, and textiles are gathered alongside detailed depictions of architecture, ornamentation, and flora and fauna from the southern Turkish city of Adana, where the artist was raised, and where Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians faced genocidal erasure in 1909, 1915, and throughout the 20th century. Reflecting on the Turkification of Anatolian food and culture, Akay explores the diasporic legacy and ongoing nature of familial inheritance, reformation, and erasure.

Title:
Prescriptions: A collection for many evils of body and the mind, also for witchcraft

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$25.00
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Summary:
"Prescriptions" is a transcription of a handwritten manuscript, dated to approximately 1650, containing a wide range of medicinal and magical remedies. Currently housed in the Cornell University Witchcraft Collection, it is assumed this practical handbook was a reference for healing, midwifery, and other medical/magical advice. Recipes and instruction cover various methods of purging, ointments for swellings, fevers, and pain reduction, lotions for venereal disease, advice for childbirth, and dilemmas such as "worms in the ear." Accompanying these medicinal prescriptions are a series of magical prescriptions: charms, rituals, and spells recorded to fortify the ailing body, induce amorous desire, or seek revenge. With its mix of Latin words, Early Modern English parlance, colloquial plant names, apothecary weights, and archaic medical terms, the recipes can at first appear opaque, but with sustained engagement one can begin to decipher the logics and structures within the writer(s)' shorthand.

Title:
Side wound: the female Christ

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$12.00
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Summary:
During the crucifixion Christ is said to have sustained 5 wounds: 1 in each hand and foot from the nails of the cross, and the 5th was formed when the side of Christ was pierced by the sword of Longinus. These 5 wounds became objects of specific veneration in the late Middle Ages and in manuscripts the side wound is usually depicted as a mandorla: an almond/diamond/vulvic shape, generally isolated from Christ's body and oriented vertically on the page. It is the vulvic shape of these images, and their implications, that this publication takes as its focus. Images of the side wound were used as talismans, one could gain magical protections by looking at them, touching, ingesting, or wrapping them around your body, and they are often found on birth girdles: rolls of parchment with magical formulae for easing birth. Mystics of this time speak of drinking from the wound, kissing it, entering it, living within it, and subsequently being birthed from the wound. The vulvic representation of the wound produced a state where Christ was seen as neither fully male, nor fully female, but rather as an unstably sexed figure, asserting a constant fluidity. Through this side wound Christ became a mother, lover, object of erotic desire, and a portal for the whole universe to emerge from.

Title:
Geomancy : A Handbook of Practice and Interpretation

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$12.00
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Summary:
Geomancy is an ancient form of divination that is practiced by making a series of random marks that are then counted into sets of odd or even sequences. Following a binary logic, the odd or even collections result in a possible sixteen figures that can be used for interpretation. The divinatory reading applies a process of mathematical recursion to these figures in order to arrive at a final answer to the query. Drawing on a range of historical sources, this handbook covers the general principles of the geomantic method, its mythological origin, the interpretation of the figures, and provides a blank “shield” for conducting your own geomantic reading.

Title:
Magic squares: Some notes on the tables of Agrippa

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$12.00
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Summary:
A magic square is a grid of numbers, arranged in such a way that the sum along any row, column, or corner to corner diagonal is the same. Magic squares are found throughout antiquity and by the time they had arrived in Renaissance Europe, by way of the translation of Arabic magical texts, 7 magic squares were known, starting with a 3x3 and ending with a 9x9 square. Due to their numerical balance, these squares were seen as reflective of an inherent balance in the cosmos, and were linked to the 7 known planetary bodies of the time: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon. Through the magic of the numbers in each square, radiating forces associated with each planet could be accessed and directed by way of a talismanic sigil.