Accidental Landscapes

Engaging essays that roam across uncertain territory, in search of sunken forests, unclassifiable islands, inflammable skies, plagiarized tabernacles, and other phenomena missing from architectural history. This collection by “architectural history's most beguiling essayist” (as Reinhold Martin calls the author in the book's foreword) illuminates the unfamiliar, the arcane, the obscure—phenomena largely missing from architectural and landscape history. These essays by Edward Eigen do not walk in a straight line, but roam across uncertain territory, discovering sunken forests, unclassifiable islands, inflammable skies, unvisited shores, plagiarized tabernacles. Taken together, these texts offer a group portrait of how certain things fall apart. We read about the statistical investigation of lightning strikes in France by the author-astronomer Camille Flammarion, which leads Eigen to reflect also on Foucault, Hamlet, and the role of the anecdote in architectural history. We learn about, among other things, Olmsted's role in transforming landscape gardening into landscape architecture; the connections among hedging, hedge funds, the High Line, and GPS bandwidth; timber-frame roofs and (spider) web-based learning; the archives of the Houses of Parliament through flood and fire; and what the 1898 disappearance and reappearance of the Trenton, New Jersey architect William W. Slack might tell us about the conflict between “the migratory impulse” and “love of home.” Eigen compares his essays to the “gathering up of seeds that fell by the wayside.” The seedlings that result create in the reader's imagination a dazzling display of the particular, the contingent, the incidental, and the singular, all in search of a narrative.

Making gorgeous landscape quilts is easy with these step-by-step instructions.

2022 NAUTILUS SILVER WINNER FOR LYRIC PROSE—In The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes, Lynne Heasley illuminates an underwater world that, despite a ferocious industrial history, remains wondrous and worthy of care. From its first scene in a benighted Great Lakes river, where lake sturgeon thrash and spawn, this powerful book takes readers on journeys through the Great Lakes, alongside fish and fishers, scuba divers and scientists, toxic pollutants and threatened communities, oil pipelines and invasive species, Indigenous peoples and federal agencies. With dazzling illustrations from Glenn Wolff, the book helps us know the Great Lakes in new ways and grapple with the legacies and alternative futures that come from their abundance of natural wealth. Suffused with curiosity, empathy, and wit, The Accidental Reef will not fail to astonish and inspire.

Create beautiful landscape quilts using strips and scraps with these 15 lovely projects! In Lovely Landscape Quilts, Cathy Geier walks you through the process of creating amazing landscape quilts using simple techniques that anyone can try. Learn how to find inspiration and choose you fabrics, how to design and lay out your quilt, and how to use angles to create skies, water, hills and mountains. Learn tricks for embellishing your quilts with applique, marker and fabric to create shadows and highlights that will give your landscape quilts depth and perspective. Finally, learn the tips for finishing and quilting before trying any of the 15 beautiful projects designed by Cathy.

Award-winning artist Whelan has illustrated the work of almost every major author in speculative fiction. Here are featured all the artist's major recent paintings, as well as a series of 25 never-before-seen works produced especially for this book. Over 100 full-color reproductions.

Accidental Wilderness showcases how the removal of city rubble and its displacement can result in new urban parklands with significant ecological importance for the health of the city and its residents.

Step into your own gorgeous landscape scenes by using the incredible texture, color, and pattern that fabric provides. No tricky technical techniques here--simplicity is the goal in these artful, small-scale representations of nature's scenery.

Quilt realistic people and places with artistic flair Create unique art quilts of your favorite places—and the places you want to go! Meri Vahl shares her simple yet unique method for quilting realistic nature scenes and villages from fabric. Using photographs from her travels, the author explains how to achieve stunning scenery with lifelike details. With techniques like fabric collage and tulle overlay, even beginners will learn to quilt majestic mountainscapes, charming buildings, and realistic people. A stunning gallery of quilts—some named best in the world—will inspire you to bring your own travel photos and art quilt ideas to life. From photo to art quilt! Recreate landscapes, people, and buildings with ease World-renowned art quilter Meri Vahl teaches you her award-winning process Immortalize your journeys as you paint scenes with fabric, one step at a time