Mind Sculpture

Listen. Can you hear an aircraft passing overhead? A dog barking? The twittering of birds? In straining to listen, you have just sent a surge of electrical activity through millions of brain cells. In choosing to do this with your mind, you have changed your brain - you have made brain cells fire, at the side of your head, above the right eye. By the time you've read this far, you will have changed your brain permanently. These words will leave a faint trace in the woven electricity of you. For 'you' exists in the trembling web of connected brain cells. This web is in flux, continually remoulded, sculpted by the restless energy of the world. That energy is transformed at your senses into the utterly unique weave of brain connections that is YOU. New research has demonstrated the way in which the brain is shaped by experience and sculpted by our interactions with the world around us. As one of the world's leading authorities on brain rehabilitation, Ian Robertson is uniquely placed to explore these ground-breaking discoveries, that free us from the currently fashionable genetically determinist view. Mind Sculpture is a singularly accessible and imaginative book which communicates the excitement and challenge of the most recent research, its consequences for how we understand the brain and how we perceive ourselves.

Listen. Can you hear an aircraft passing overhead? A dog barking? The twittering of birds? In straining to listen, you have just sent a surge of electrical activity through millions of brain cells. In choosing to do this with your mind, you have changed your brain - you have made brain cells fire, at the side of your head, above the right eye. By the time you've read this far, you will have changed your brain permanently. These words will leave a faint trace in the woven electricity of you. For 'you' exists in the trembling web of connected brain cells. This web is in flux, continually remoulded, sculpted by the restless energy of the world. That energy is transformed at your senses into the utterly unique weave of brain connections that is YOU. New research has demonstrated the way in which the brain is shaped by experience and sculpted by our interactions with the world around us. As one of the world's leading authorities on brain rehabilitation, Ian Robertson is uniquely placed to explore these ground-breaking discoveries, that free us from the currently fashionable genetically determinist view. Mind Sculpture is a singularly accessible and imaginative book which communicates the excitement and challenge of the most recent research, its consequences for how we understand the brain and how we perceive ourselves.

A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

Improve your life fearlessly with this essential guide to kaizen—the art of making great and lasting change through small, steady steps. The philosophy is simple: Great change is made through small steps. And the science is irrefutable: Small steps circumvent the brain's built-in resistance to new behavior. No matter what the goal—losing weight, quitting smoking, writing a novel, starting an exercise program, or meeting the love of your life—the powerful technique of kaizen is the way to achieve it. Written by psychologist and kaizen expert Dr. Robert Maurer, One Small Step Can Change Your Life is the simple but potent guide to easing into new habits—and turning your life around. Learn how to overcome fear and procrastination with his 7 Small Steps—including how to Think Small Thoughts, Take Small Actions, and Solve Small Problems—to steadily build your confidence and make insurmountable-seeming goals suddenly feel doable. Dr. Maurer also shows how to visualize virtual change so that real change can come more easily. Why small rewards lead to big returns. And how great discoveries are made by paying attention to the little details most of us overlook. His simple regiment is your path to continuous improvement for anything from losing weight to quitting smoking, paying off debt, or conquering shyness and meeting new people. Rooted in the two-thousand-year-old wisdom of the Tao Te Ching—“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”—here is the way to change your life without fear, without failure, and start on a new path of easy, continuous improvement.

A rich, thought-provoking collection of essays, critiques and interviews from the influential author of Ain't I a Woman and All About Love ‘If one could make a people lose touch with their capacity to create, lose sight of their will and their power to make art, then the work of subjugation, of colonization, is complete. Such work can be undone only by acts of reclamation.’ In a collection of essays, critiques and interviews, bell hooks responds to the ongoing dialogues about producing, exhibiting and criticising art and aesthetics in a world increasingly concerned with identity politics. hooks shares her own experience of the transformative power of art whilst exploring topics ranging from art in education and the home to the politics of space and imagination as a revolutionary tool. She positions her writings on visual politics within the ever-present question of how art can be empowering within the Black community. Speaking with artists such as Carrie Mae Weems and Alison Saar, and examining the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Art on My Mind is a generous and expansive body of work that has become increasingly relevant since it was first published in 1995. Here is an essential tool for understanding the contemporary moment, and a fundamental text for any reader concerned with making and sustaining a democratic artistic culture.

Charles Collins has arrived. Those fortunate enough to own a piece of Collins Art in their collection know. His work is featured in some very prestigious museums, and homes. The museum of New Mexico, Millicent Rodgers Museum, Harwood Museum and the Guthrie Center are public facilities that showcase some of his work. With thousands of private collectors who support the timeless, and unmistakable works of Charles Collins. Many international collectors such as Neil Young, David Bromburg, Joan Baez, KD Lang, Dwight Yocum, Pierce Brosnan, Paul Horn, Michael Martin Murphy, Jeffery Jones, Arlo Guthrie, and many other share in Collins vision. Legendary folk singer Arlo Guthrie commissioned Collins to do the cover art for "Son of the Wind" He was also the inaugural artist for the Guthrie Center. Michael Martin Murphy commissioned art from Collins for his album "River Of Time". He is honored by fellow artist who support is work and his vision for God In The Arts Foundation. Collins is truly one of the most important artist to call New Mexico home. With a Day named in his honor in the State of New Mexico it is obvious New Mexico is as proud of him as he is of it. The many awards Collins has received for his work have made him the "Most Awarded Artist in the History of the Taos Art Festival”. We all look forward to what Charles Collins will have to share with us next.

Since the Renaissance, at least, the medium of sculpture has been associated explicitly with the sense of touch. Sculptors, philosophers and art historians have all linked the two, often in strikingly different ways. In spite of this long running interest in touch and tactility, it is vision and visuality which have tended to dominate art historical research in recent decades. This book introduces a new impetus to the discussion of the relationship between touch and sculpture by setting up a dialogue between art historians and individuals with fresh insights who are working in disciplines beyond art history. The collection brings together a rich and diverse set of approaches, with essays tackling subjects from prehistoric figurines to the work of contemporary artists, from pre-modern ideas about the physiology of touch to tactile interaction in the museum environment, and from the phenomenology of touch in recent philosophy to the experimental findings of scientific study. It is the first volume on this subject to take such a broad approach and, as such, seeks to set the agenda for future research and collaboration in this area.