Written by To our readers in the northern hemisphere, I hope your summer is going well! May I recommend some volumes to enjoy on a lounge chair under a sun umbrella? If you’d be receptive to reviewing one of them for us, I’d gladly ask the publisher to ship you a complimentary copy! You’d only need to submit the review by December 2023 for inclusion in our Spring/Summer 2024 issue. Our reviewer guidelines are here, and you can reach me at apoe@womansartjournal.org or via our online form under “About: Online Submissions.”
Happy reading!
– Alison Poe, PhD, WAJ Book Reviews Editor
Lee Ann Timreck. Pieces of Freedom: The Emancipation Sculptures of Edmonia Lewis and Meta Warrick Fuller. University of Mississippi Press, 2023. Situates the 1867 marble sculpture Forever Free by Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844–1909) against the backdrop of American Reconstruction and the 1913 plaster/2000 bronze Emancipation by Meta Warrick Fuller (1877–1968) within the context of Jim Crow segregation. “Lewis and Fuller,” Timreck writes, “used their art as a platform against racial and gendered injustice” (11).
Victoria Jenssen, The Art of Carol Janeway: A Tile & Ceramics Career with Georg Jenssen Inc. and Ossip Zadkine in 1940s Manhattan. Friesen Press, August 2022. The first monograph on the brief but prolific career of American ceramics artist Carol Janeway (1913–1989), who specialized in playful animal and plant imagery. Includes a catalogue of her fireplace surrounds, mirror frames, tableware, jewelry, and myriad other output.
Lisa Le Feuvre and Katerina Pierre. Nancy Holt / Inside Outside. Monacelli Press, 2022. Considers the American artist (1938–2014) whose land art, concrete poetry, sculpture, film, and works in a range of other media include the 1970s Utah earthwork Sun Tunnels, now one of the nine sites managed by the Dia Art Foundation. Accompanies an exhibition that originated at the Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden.
Morna Laing. Picturing the Woman-Child: Fashion, Feminism and the Female Gaze. Bloomsbury, 2023. Analyzes constructions of femininity in the photographs of British fashion magazines, 1990–2015.