Online Directory

Andy Newman, Painter

  Andy Newman has his studio at the Emerson Umbrella for the Arts in Concord, Massachusetts. He is represented by more than ten galleries in Canada, England, France, Italy and Portugal in addition to the United States, and he has had solo museum exhibitions in Portugal and Macau. His work has been praised by critic Donald Kuspit for its "sophistication and intelligence." View more at andynewman.net

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Barbara Lehman is the creator of Brown Dog Books & Gifts logo!

                                                                      Award-winning commercial artist, illustrator, and children's book author Barbara Lehman has been praised for her imaginative, colorful cartoon art, which has appeared in both her own books and those with texts by other writers. In 2005 she was honored for her talents when The Red Book, a wordless picture book that captures the excitement and adventure to be found through reading, earned Lehman a prestigious Caldecott Honor designation. Lehman was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in New Jersey. As a child, she loved to visit the art museums in nearby New York City. She began to draw at an early age, inspired in part by the prints of John Tenniel's illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland that her father hand-colored and hung over her crib. To prepare herself for a career as an artist, she attended New York City's Pratt Institute and earned a B.F.A. in illustration. As a professional artist as well as an illustrator, she has worked as an animator, a graphic designer, and a window designer, although she admits that creating book illustrations gives her the most satisfaction. Inspired by Lehman's view of the landscape from high atop a Manhattan skyscraper, The Red Book finds a young girl carried on a magical journey after she discovers a bright red book peeking out of a snow bank on a cold winter day during her walk to her city school. In Barbara Lehman's imaginative picture book The Red Book a young girl takes a journey of the imagination that leads her to a new friend. (Text and illustrations copyright © 2004 by Barbara Lehman. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.) Opening the book at school, she realize that it is magical; its pictures move, revealing a sun-lit island scene and a boy perusing a similar book. With a turn of the page, the boy's view zooms in, revealing the girl sitting at her desk in the city, and suddenly the two children are able to see each other! Inspired by the book, the girl buys a large bunch of balloons and rises into the air, determined to find the boy's island and leave her own world behind. Telling its story through Lehman's pen-and-ink, watercolor, and gouache illustrations and ending with an interesting twist, The Red Book was praised by Horn Book contributor Joanna Rudge Long for presenting a "pleasing puzzle that will challenge young imaginations and intellects." "As visually uncluttered as it is conceptually rich, Lehman's red book is a little treasure of its own," wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor, while in School Library Journal Kathy Krasniewicz deemed the book a "perfectly eloquent" work that "captures the magical possibility that exists every time readers open a book." In Booklist Jennifer Mattson recommended The Red Book as "ideal for fueling creative-writing exercises." Read more: Barbara Lehman (1963–) Biography - Personal, Addresses, Career, Honors Awards, Writings, Sidelights http://biography.jrank.org/pages/2294/Lehman-Barbara-1963.html#ixzz0sYvqAHdF       Ms. Lehman is the creator of Brown Dog Books & Gifts logo

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Janice A. Bauch Photographer

    My professional position in today's highly technical photographic world has evolved over the years from a partnership of 20 years in a general photographic studio in eastern Massachusetts and 20 years teaching in the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.   My passion is photography so I moved to Vermont several years ago, following my teaching career, to be closer to family, pursue my photographic loves of capturing the essence of flora, fauna and animals.   Here is a sampling of my work that has brought me great joy....hope you enjoy also.

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Wade Rouse's new book is here!

                              How come the only thing my family tree ever grows is nuts?" Wade Rouse attempts to answer that question in his blisteringly funny new memoir by looking at the yearly celebrations that unite us all and bring out the very best and worst in our nearest and dearest. Family is truly the only gift that keeps on giving--namely, the gifts of dysfunction and eccentricity-- and Wade Rouse's family has been especially charitable: His chatty yet loving mother dresses her son as a Ubangi tribesman, in blackface, for Halloween in the rural Ozarks; his unconventional engineer of a father buries his children's Easter eggs; his marvelously Martha Stewart-esque partner believes Barbie is his baby; his garage-sale obsessed set of in-laws are convinced they can earn more than Warren Buffett by selling their broken lamps and Nehru jackets; his mutt Marge speaks her own language; and his oddball collection of relatives includes a tipsy Santa Claus with an affinity for showing off his jingle balls. In the end, though, the Rouse House gifted Wade with love, laughter, understanding, superb comic timing, and a humbling appreciation for humiliation. Whether Wade dates a mime on his birthday to overcome his phobia of clowns or outruns a chubchasing boss on Secretary's Day, he captures our holidays with his trademark self-deprecating humor and acerbic wit. He paints a funny, sad, poignant, and outlandish portrait of an an all-too-typical family that will have you appreciating--or bemoaning--your own and shrieking in laughter.                                 http://www.waderouse.com/content/index.asp

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