Thirty-six Views of O
From the preface -
There is a vast sea of stories and sharing them with each other is one of the greatest joys of being alive.
The idea for this book came from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, an ukiyo-e series of large, color woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. He began the series in 1830, when he was seventy years old, and it took him five years to complete. The first time that I came across these prints (online at Wikipedia) I was transfixed by the dramatic and wildly differing landscapes, cityscapes, rural scenes and individual stories that were unfolding and yet somewhere in the background of each, sometimes prominently, but more often harder to find, was the iconic snow covered image of Mount Fuji. The mountain in the distance provides a strangely moving unity to their fleeting and disparate lives.
There are a hundreds of thousands of stories moving through the streets of Omaha every day. This book is an imaginative flight born out of that huge wave of life. It is a collaboration of words and images that explore the city as it is filtered through the artistry and imagination of thirty-six local visual artists and writers.
I am deeply grateful to all the visual artists and writers who so generously contributed their time, energy and work to make this book possible.
Hopefully, this is the first in a series that will explore our island city floating so far out in the rolling sea of grass.
Kevin Lawler
The book is available at local independent bookstores as well as online here at Amazon.
From the preface -
There is a vast sea of stories and sharing them with each other is one of the greatest joys of being alive.
The idea for this book came from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, an ukiyo-e series of large, color woodblock prints by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. He began the series in 1830, when he was seventy years old, and it took him five years to complete. The first time that I came across these prints (online at Wikipedia) I was transfixed by the dramatic and wildly differing landscapes, cityscapes, rural scenes and individual stories that were unfolding and yet somewhere in the background of each, sometimes prominently, but more often harder to find, was the iconic snow covered image of Mount Fuji. The mountain in the distance provides a strangely moving unity to their fleeting and disparate lives.
There are a hundreds of thousands of stories moving through the streets of Omaha every day. This book is an imaginative flight born out of that huge wave of life. It is a collaboration of words and images that explore the city as it is filtered through the artistry and imagination of thirty-six local visual artists and writers.
I am deeply grateful to all the visual artists and writers who so generously contributed their time, energy and work to make this book possible.
Hopefully, this is the first in a series that will explore our island city floating so far out in the rolling sea of grass.
Kevin Lawler
The book is available at local independent bookstores as well as online here at Amazon.
