Just Arrived: Wharton Esherick and the Birth of the American Modern

For more images from inside the book.

From the inside cover:

He produced paintings and woodblock prints, set designs, sculpture, furniture , and architecture. He and his community of friends created an artistic circle in which arts and crafts were both joined, and in which radical new ideas flourished, helping to shape the course of American Modernism.

Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson are counted among those in Esherick's circle.

Of particular note are the passages on Marietta Johnson's School for Organic Education, Centaur Press, and the Adirondack dance camps.

If you are a fan of Eric Drooker, you might recognize inspiration in the Hammersmen woodcut shown above, which was an illustration from Walt Whitman's Song of the Broad-Axe done in 1924.

This book will be of interest to many for its intimate portrayal of a life well-lived.

~ Jennifer Nace, Reference and Instruction Librarian