Grant Kester discusses the disparate network of artists & collectives united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, & culture.

Born of the Sun begins with the awakening of Miatron, High Priest of Upper and Lower Egypt, to his divine mission. He is disheartened by the fact he is nearing the completion of his life with only banal repetitious spiritual ritual to show for his many years of existence. Suddenly he hears a voice telling him the bloodline of the Pharaohs has been corrupted by interbreeding and instructing him to seek a woman of pure blood to be the new queen to the aging Amunhotep III. He and three young apprentices set out in secret to search for this maiden. They must each find her through their own intuition as to her identity, for her protection is a secret even to her own family. Found in a small village near the Caspian Sea, young Tyi, future Queen of Egypt, returns with them and is placed under the guardianship of the temples until she becomes of age. Once she begins her flow she is married to the Pharaoh. Her winning personality and uncanny wisdom soon make her the favorite wife and advisor to Amunhotep III. She soon becomes pregnant with Akhenaton. Opposing her position are another son of the Pharaoh and some of the Amun priests. They plot to prevent the birth of ascension to the throne through a number of maneuvers. Miatron and Tyi speak consistently to the child in the womb to give it precognition upon its birth. Born Amunhotep IV, the child is sheltered by mother and High Priest to prevent his corruption by the Amun priests. Finally, forced to enter his training for succession to the throne, the young prince ignores most of the temple teachings in favor of those of Tyi and Miatron. Immediately upon his father's death he disappears, called to training by the ancient masters hidden away in caves near the Nile halfway between Thebes and Memphis. Inside these caves are secret Temples of Light, there since the days of the lost continent of Atlantis. During his absence a number of ploys are attempted by his half-brother, Akenset, son of one of the lesser wives and other discontented officials to defer his coronation in Akenset's favor. The popular Tyi and Miatron solely prevent this, now on his deathbed. Upon his return Amunhotep IV is crowned under his new name, Akhenaton. For a time, Akhenaton attempts to bring about a gradual movement away from the corrupt Amun priesthood to the one God, Aton, and Source of All Creation from the Central Sun. This was not an original idea, as he was taught in the Temples of Light, but a return to Source which had been diluted by the myriad of gods that filled the Amun temples of Egypt and Babylon. Resistance to change was entrenched by a priesthood enriched by a public only too willing to pay for their supplications to the angry gods instilled by irreverent predecessors to maintain control. Akhenaton finally felt he was left with no alternative but to destroy the symbols of the lesser gods in the temples. This further alienated him from the priests and many government officials. He lost the loyalty of the army, foreign minister, and minister of affairs by his pacifist beliefs, refusing to support military ventures or to increase requested taxes to support them. Tyi was a unifying force, strong in support of her son, but flexible in negotiation. Both she and her son were popular with the masses. His half-brother, Akenset, now High Priest of Upper and Lower Egypt was displeasing to all. Always in the front of Akhenaton's mind was the vision of a City of Light to be located near the Temple of Light in the caves. Finally, left with no choice but to remove his government from the corruption of Thebes, he began the construction of the city, Akhetaton. His loyal and adept mother remained in Thebes to outmaneuver the government officials and priests left behind. His beautiful and charming queen, Nefretiti, remained to entertain the

Come join this comprehensive workshop with actor, teacher, artist, Jeffrey Dreisbach as he shows you the best methods, techniques and inside tips that can launch your professional voice-over career. Whether you are new to this potentially lucrative performance art or an accomplished actor looking to broaden your skill set, this Master class will guide you every step of the way. From copy interpretation techniques and audition tools to choosing the right material for your demo, each chapter provides in-depth information in an upbeat, humorous and conversational style...Just as if you were in the studio taking Jeffrey's workshop in person. Actor, artist, teacher and author Jeffrey Dreisbach began his professional acting career at an early age in Michigan. He received a BFA Degree from Wayne State University after performing at Walt Disney World (Cal Arts) and advance theater training in London, England (Roger Williams College). For the next 20 years, Jeff found success acting in New York, accumulating theater, film and television credits. On Broadway, he was in the original cast of A Few Good Men and A New York Summer. He played, Norman Van Buren on NBC's Another World, national tours of Grease, Boys Next Door, Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii and in numerous regional theater productions. Feature film roles include, Splash, Die Hard 3, Thomas Crown Affair, Monday Night Mayhem, among others. It was during this period Jeffrey performed in several national commercials and voice-overs. Notable clients included, KFC, Pepsi, Spidel watch, Palmolive, HBO, etc. as well as animation voices for Mattel Toys and voice chip manufacturer, Pragmatic Designs. A short time later, Jeffrey served as executive director of the nation's oldest and largest group broadcast training schools. He remained in this capacity for 12 years. As teacher and administrator, he developed unique voice-over and on-camera presentation training techniques and course curriculums. Using his acting experience, technical and teaching skills, Jeffrey now incorporates his unique background and energetic personality at colleges, universities and professional training programs looking to enhance and broaden their performing arts programs. Conversation Pieces out of the studio, The voice-over workshop for professional actors is his second book. Conversation Pieces out of the Woods, his first book, is a pictorial collection of of tree, branch and root furniture hand crafted by Jeffrey.

In this interdisciplinary study, Ann Bermingham explores the complex, ambiguous, and often contradictory relationship between English landscape painting and the socio-economic changes that accompanied enclosure and the Industrial Revolution.

A comprehensive look into the fascinating life and enduring legacy of Juan Muñoz and his enigmatic installations “Walking between these figures feels like an interruption; being a spectator is itself a performance. They seem to know more than we do, about the status of being an artwork and the place of the viewer. The joke, if there is one, is on us.” —The Guardian Muñoz’s revolutionary oeuvre evokes emotional narratives through sculpture, installation, drawing, writing, and sound. Situating viewers between his work and among one another, he creates an intimacy between art and its audience. Muñoz thought deeply about art history and, in particular, the tradition of Spanish painting. Before his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive, powerfully evocative body of work that uniquely explores the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art. Published on the occasion of the exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2022, this catalogue provides an expansive overview of Muñoz’s career from the 1980s onward. In an accompanying text, the art historian and curator Guillaume Kientz contextualizes Muñoz’s influences within the art-historical canon. The acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt contributes a thoughtful response to the artist’s iconic Conversation Piece. In an imagined interview between Muñoz and himself, Maurizio Cattelan further propels the artist’s momentum and potential in the time before his death. Also featured is a never-before-published interview between Muñoz and the art historian Michael Brenson that took place in 2000.

With its control of sugar plantations in the Caribbean and tea, cotton, and indigo production in India, Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries dominated the global economy of tropical agriculture. In Colonizing Nature, Beth Fowkes Tobin shows how dominion over "the tropics" as both a region and an idea became central to the way in which Britons imagined their role in the world. Tobin examines georgic poetry, landscape portraiture, natural history writing, and botanical prints produced by Britons in the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and India to uncover how each played a crucial role in developing the belief that the tropics were simultaneously paradisiacal and in need of British intervention and management. Her study examines how slave garden portraits denied the horticultural expertise of the slaves, how the East India Company hired such artists as William Hodges to paint and thereby Anglicize the landscape and gardens of British-controlled India, and how writers from Captain James Cook to Sir James E. Smith depicted tropical lands and plants. Just as mastery of tropical nature, and especially its potential for agricultural productivity, became key concepts in the formation of British imperial identity, Colonizing Nature suggests that intellectual and visual mastery of the tropics—through the creation of art and literature—accompanied material appropriations of land, labor, and natural resources. Tobin convincingly argues that the depictions of tropical plants, gardens, and landscapes that circulated in the British imagination provide a key to understanding the forces that shaped the British Empire.

'Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in British Culture' offers an eclectic approach to contemporary fashion studies. Taking a broad definition of British culture, this collection of essays explores the significance of style to issues such as colonialism, race, gender and class, embracing topics as diverse as eighteenth-century portraiture, literary dress culture and Edwardian working-class glamour. Examining the emblematic power of garments themselves and the context in which they are styled, this work interrogates the ways that personal style can itself decontextualize garments to radically reframe their meanings. Using an intentionally eclectic range of subjects from an interdisciplinary perspective, this collection builds on the work of theorists such as Aileen Ribeiro, Vika Martina Plock, Cheryl Buckley and Hilary Fawcett, to examine the social significance of personal style, while also highlighting the diversity of British culture itself.

Covering everything from Hollywood films to Soviet cinema, London's queer spaces to spaceships, horror architecture and action scenes, Screen Interiors presents an array of innovative perspectives on film design. Essays address questions related to interiors and objects in film and television from the early 1900s up until the present day. Authors explore how interior film design can facilitate action and amplify tensions, how rooms are employed as structural devices and how designed spaces can contribute to the construction of identities. Case studies look at disjunctions between interior and exterior design and the inter-relationship of production design and narrative. With a lens on class, sexuality and identity across a range of films including Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913), The Servant (1963), Caravaggio (1986), and Passengers (2016), and illustrated with film stills throughout, Screen Interiors showcases an array of methodological approaches for the study of film and design history.

Jane Austen was a keen consumer of the arts throughout her lifetime. The Edinburgh Companion to Jane Austen and the Arts considers how Austen represents the arts in her writing, from her juvenilia to her mature novels. The thirty-three original chapters in this Companion cover the full range of Austen's engagement with the arts, including the silhouette and the caricature, crafts, theatre, fashion, music and dance, together with the artistic potential of both interior and exterior spaces. This volume also explores her artistic afterlives in creative re-imaginings across different media, including adaptations and transpositions in film, television, theatre, digital platforms and games.

These essays explore both literal and metaphorical crossings of the globe, addressing the cultural significance of maps, paintings, travel writing, tourist manuals, cultural identities, island gardens, and other topics in order to lend insight to our perception of global culture during the long 18th century.