What's Neat on the Net: Visual+

Here's what's neat on the net, according to me, and leaning for some reason to the visual this time:

1) Matt Kish, originator and artist who did Moby Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Each Page, of which I am a huge fan, has now announced (according to the Tin House blog) his next project, pictures for Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Go, Matt! We can't wait!

2) TAXI is featuring Ukrainian artist Shupliak Oleg's portraits in the medium of optical illusion. You won't believe this. Check out Anthea Quay's article.

3) If you subscribe to the Tupelo Press e-newsletter, you will have received an email for a buy-one-get-one-free offer (I don't find it on their website otherwise, but could be wrong). If you don't subscribe, do it--they have lots of sales that they will notify you of, and if you subscribe now, maybe you can get in on this one too. Scroll to the bottom of the page linked here, and do it now!

Moby-Dick Big Read

Two summers ago I blogged about my book shame, having not read Moby-Dick. Having publicly exposed my shame, I was sufficiently motivated to go ahead and read it, and I finished it later that summer. Yay!

Then I discovered Matt Kish's Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page, which I blogged about and which I continue to adore.

Now I've discovered Moby-Dick Big Read, a collaborative project of readers and artists (including Tilda Swinton, Will Self, China Mieville, Tony Kushner, Joyelle McSweeney, & Mary Oliver) each reading one chapter of Melville's masterful tome aloud. A project of artist Angela Cockayne and writer Philip Hoare, this reading project grew out of Peninsula Arts Whale Festival of 2011.

You can download each chapter in iTunes for free, to let the listening begin. I already have and will be enjoying Moby-Dick once again this autumn.

Trailing a Whale

Here's the trailer for Matt Kish's new book from Tin House, Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page.

I know I keep mentioning this project, but I'm crazy about it. Enjoy the trailer. (Have I mentioned yet that Kish used all sorts of odd household items in his artwork, including nail polish? How can you not love that?)

Matt Kish on PBS Newshour

Artist Matt Kish, whose book Moby Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Each Page that I raved about this summer even though the book is not yet out from Tin House, is interviewed at PBS Newshour Art Beat blog here.

An excerpt from the interview is below:

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ART BEAT: By taking on this project you became more intimately involved with "Moby-Dick". Did you discover new things about the book or have new interpretations?

MATT KISH: Sometimes I feel it's easier to define my project more by what it's not than by what it is. It is certainly not an attempt to create the definitive "Moby-Dick". My illustrations are not even remotely historically accurate at all. Many of them are rather fantastic. The whole illustration project is an intensely personal exploration of the book and what the story is to me. Doing this project, though, was really the most personally intimate I had ever been with the novel and near the end it began to be really more of a mirror of myself and some of the things I had experienced, and what my life had been like so far, and how the book had been a companion to me throughout my life.

So in a sense these illustrations are just as much a representation of me as an individual as they are of the novel. And, you know, it took me to some pretty dark places at times. The book, near the end, is frightfully bleak and nihilistic and it exposed some of those elements inside myself and really made me confront some of the things that had been plaguing me for a long time. It really was an ordeal, it really was a long journey. But by finishing, I really feel that I was able to put some of those things to rest and close a part of my life and move forward.

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For more of the interview, and to see a slideshow of 20 of the drawings and pages, click on the link.

Moby Dick: The Shortcut

Last week I blogged about my own personal Book Shame, not having yet read Moby Dick.

Today I am wondering if I can instead look through Matt Kish's book forthcoming from Tin House Books, Moby Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Each Page, which includes schematics and drawings like the following:

So what do you say? Does it count?

Follow Matt Kish at his blog, which also links you to his artwork for sale on Etsy. And please say this will count.......