Books
Sandy Walker The Woodblock Prints, 1967–2023, A Catalogue Raisonné
A fully illustrated catalogue raisonné of the woodblock prints of artist Sandy Walker, including the artist’s biography and detailed information on each work. An essential research artifact for collectors and scholars of contemporary American art. Accompanied by an in-depth essay by art historian Darlene Michitsch.
The book is available for purchase at Cicero Books.
American Visions: The Paintings of Sandy Walker
For many years I have admired Sandy Walker for the epic scope of his vision and ambition, and for the passion and intelligence that animates everything he creates. … [This] book … miraculously communicates in a small format the experience of standing before Sandy’s wall-sized canvases.
– David Butler, Director, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita State University
My Deepest Desire
by Tamiki Hara
Sandy Walker, artist
Liza Dalby, translator
A poetic short story about the yearning to live and love fully, free from the burden of loss and tragedy
My Deepest Desire is Tamiki Hara’s final work, published posthumously after his tragic suicide in 1951. A short yet grippingly moving meditation on the desire to live a different, fuller life, free from pain, isolation, and the intrusively haunting experience of tragedy, it is a demonstration of how dreams, memories, and traumatic despair intertwine inside a person’s psyche.
New Village Press will launch My Deepest Desire at Busboys and Poets bookstore on 14th & V Streets NW in D.C. on April 17, 6-8 p.m. (Please note the discount code – PEACE20 – is not valid on Amazon. You are encouraged to buy the book from NYU Press or your favorite bookstore.)
Artist’s Preface
In 1982 my friend Alan Gussow initiated the Shadow Project in New York City. It grew each year to where people in more than one thousand locations worldwide, on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, participated by painting the outlines (shadows) of humans and animals on streets and sidewalks each year for all to see early in the morning as they got up and went to work.
My wife, dancer and choreographer Ellen Webb, and I, in about 1985, participated in our small community in the North Cascades National Park of Washington state. Then around 1988, Ellen and I were in central Wyoming when we heard that Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay (the plane that carried the bomb) was speaking in Casper. We were stunned and appalled by what he said. This led us to collaborating on an evening length performance at the Cowell Theater in San Francisco near the 50th anniversary of the bombing. Tibbets’ words were at the heart of the performance. During our research for the performance, I read this work of poet Tamiki Hara, which conflates the loss of Tamaki’s wife before the bombing with the experience of the bombing and its aftermath as he struggled to make sense of life.
I was deeply moved by this work and resolved to make an artwork around it. Over a long time I carried it with me. One dark night I found the images, or I could say they found me, in the in the form of these ink drawings. After that time, it still took me years (over 25 years in all) to bring the text together with the images. Finally, I determined to handwrite the words as if I were Tamiki. The project has rested with me in this form as a loose portfolio until Lynne Elizabeth saw it, and later asked if New Village Press could publish it, not with my handwriting but with a typeset text opposite the drawings.
I am thrilled that Tamiki Hara’s writing can have more life, especially in this new translation by Liza Dalby. We also offer the Japanese text at the end. – Sandy Walker
My Deepest Desire launch at Busboys and Poets, in D.C.
New Village Press will launch My Deepest Desire at Busboys and Poets bookstore on 14th & V Streets NW in D.C. on April 17, 6-8 p.m. (Please note the discount code – PEACE20 – is not valid on Amazon. You are encouraged to buy the book from NYU Press or your favorite bookstore.)