Earlier this year Glasstire founder Rainey Knudson reviewed the UT Press book The Collections, a massive tome chronicling every object in the collection of the University of Texas at Austin. She called it “the most important book in Texas this year.” UT Press is known for its large, heavy, handsome monographs of Texas artists. Their dominance of coffee-table art book publishing in Texas has seemed secure…
…that is, until Texas A&M Press secured the rights to the Dorothy Hood catalog for the show currently on view at the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi. Without putting too delicate a point on it, Hood is a superior artist to more than one of those who have been bestowed with UT Press books. You snooze, you lose, UT Press!
THEN this morning we received a copy of The Art of Found Objects, a new book of interviews with 60+ Texas artists by Robert Craig Bunch and published, once again, by Texas A&M Press. The artists have little in common with each other besides the fact that they all live in Texas and they all make work that incorporates found objects. It looks very good, with engaging interviews that include Helen Altman, Vernon Fisher, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mimi Kato, Jesse Lott, Forrest Prince, Dario Robleto, Luke Savisky and Patrick Turk, among many others. Each artist is published with a straight interview with no introductory text, allowing the artists’ voices to be the focal point of their section.
Go TAMU Press! Um… gig them?
