My new goal is to conquer one of those “100 Top Books” lists. However, all the one’s I’ve found are heavy on things like… Vonnegut and Lord of the Flies… you know, books that have the power to make me feel tortured merely by remembering them. So – you are now charged with helping me create my own. Give me your top 5 [at least] favorite books…

I’m happy to say, that my list of 100 books recommended by my friends, family, and fellow bloggers is complete! I will be reading each f the books and blogging on them as I go.  If anyone would like to take this epic journey along with me, feel free. I will be starting off with the #1 suggested book - Stephen King’s The Stand.

Many of the books I own, some of which I haven’t even read yet! This is organized by the number of votes a book received, then alphabetically within books that received the same recognition. I may not read them in order, as I’d like to read the ones I have first.

 I will be re-reading books I have already read, as I would like to write about things as I come across them. I may have read the Mists of Avalon 8 times already, but that doesn’t mean I remember every page!

 I will be blog about the books as I read them on my art/ literature blog [that seldom gets used!]:

 I’m even happier to say that my two favorite books of all time are on this list! [The Mists of Avalon and Deerskin].

 I’m less happy to report that the DaVinci Code made the list and I have to re-read it. Super. My brain can melt all over again.

 And without further adieu…

1. The Stand – Stephen King – 8 Votes
2. The Mists of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley – 6 Votes
3. The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger – 6 Votes
4. To Kill a Mocking Bird – Harper Lee – 5 Votes
5. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving – 4 Votes
6. Frankenstein – Mary Shelley – 4 Votes
7. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden – 4 Votes
8. Sellevision - Augusten Borroughs – 4 Votes
9. The Golden Compass [His Dark Materials] – Philip Pullman – 4 Votes
10. The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – 4 Votes
11. Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen – 4 Votes
12. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith – 3 Votes
13. Atonement – Ian McEwan – 3 Votes
14. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – 3 Votes
15. Dracula – Bram Stoker – 3 Votes
16. Dry – Agusten Borroughs – 3 Votes
17. Fight Club – Chuck Palahniuk – 3 Votes
18. Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris – 3 Votes
19. North & SouthElizabeth Gaskell – 3 votes
20. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – 3 Votes
21. Running with Scissors – Augesten Borroughs – 3 Votes
22. The Corrections – Jonthan Franzen – 3 Votes 
23. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – 3 Votes
24. The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd – 3 Votes
25. A Thousand Spelndid Suns – Khaled Hosseini – 2 Votes
26. A Wrinkle in Time – Madeline L’Engle – 2 Votes
27. American Gods - Neil Gaiman – 2 Votes
28. Angela’s Ashes – Frank McCourt – 2 Votes
29. Animal, Vegetable, Mirale - Barbara Kingsolver – 2 Votes
30. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - 2 Votes
31. Beach Music – Pat Conroy – 2 Votes
32. Behold Your Queen – Gladys Malvern – 2 Votes
33. Bitter is the New Black - Jennifer Lancaster – 2 Votes
34. Bleak House – Charles Dickens – 2 Votes
35. Briar Rose – Jane Yolen – 2 Votes
36. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – 2 Votes
37. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – 2 Votes
38. Deerskin – Robin McKinley – 2 Votes
39. Desperation – Stephen King – 2 Votes
40. Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card – 2 Votes
41. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer – 2 Votes
42. Glass Castles - Jeannette Walls – 2 Votes
43. Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell – 2 Votes
44. Good Omens - Neil Gaiman - 2 Votes
45. Heart Shaped Box - Joe Hill – 2 Votes
46. The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown – 2 Votes
47. House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski - 2 Votes
48. Howard’s End - EM Forster – 2 Votes
49. Lamb: Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend - Christopher Moore  – 2 Votes
50. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo – 2 Votes
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel – 2 Votes
52. Little Earthquakes – Jennifer Weiner – 2 Votes
53. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Marquez – 2 Votes
54. Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold – 2 Votes
55. Memory & Dream - Charles De Lint – 2 Votes
56. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt – 2 Votes
57. Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman – 2 Votes
58. On the Road - Jack Kerouac – 2 Votes
59. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Marquez  – 2 Votes
60. Outlander – Diana Gabaldon – 2 Votes
61. Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy – 2 Votes
62. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier – 2 Votes
63. Sabriel- Garth Nix – 2 Votes
64. Sarah’s Key - Tatiana de Rosnay – 2 votes
65. Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs – Chuck Klosterman – 2 Votes [Author]
66. Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle – 2 Votes
67. Such a Pretty Fat - Jennifer Lancaster – 2 Votes
68. The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood - 2 Votes
69. The Blue Sword – Robin McKinley – 2 Votes
70. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger – 2 Votes
71. The Color Purple - Alice Walker – 2 Votes
72. The Complete Works – William Shakespear – 2 Votes
73. The Confessions of Max Tivoli - Andrew Sean Greer – 2 Votes
74. The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – 2 Votes
75. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time – Mark Haddon – 2 Votes
76. The Glass Lake - Maeve Binchy – 2 Votes
77. The Golden - Lucius Shepard – 2 Votes
78. The Great Train Robbery – Michael Crichton – 2 Votes
79. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Maryann Shaffer – 2 Votes
80. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova – 2 Votes
81. The Iliad – Homer – 2 Votes
82. The Little Prince - Antoin De Saint Exipery – 2 Votes
83. The Man in the Iron Mask - Alexandre Dumas – 2 Votes
84. The Name on the Wind - Patrick Rothfuss – 2 Votes
85. The Odyssey – Homer – 2 Votes
86. The Once and Future King – T.H. White – 2 Votes
87. The Pickwick Papers – Charles Dickens – 2 Votes
88. The Riddle Master – Patricia McKillip – 2 Votes
89. The Shining – Stephen King – 2 Votes
90. The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway – 2 Votes
91. The Three Muskateers - Alexandre Dumas – 2 Votes
92. The Velveteen Rabbit - Margery Williams – 2 Votes
93. The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami – 2 Votes
94. The Witch of Portobello - Paolo Coelho – 2 Votes
95. Tigana - Guy Gavriel Kay - 2 Votes
96. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom – 2 Votes
97. Waking the Moon – Elizabeth Hand – 2 Votes
98. Watership Down - Richard Adams – 2 Votes
99. White Oleander - Janet Fitch – 2 Votes
100. Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – 2 Votes

The rest of the pictures I have on webshots can be seen here: 

http://community.webshots.com/user/MaryannShaw

           I love layers.   

           I love dressing in layers. 

          If you find my in the middle of July, I’ll still have at least two shirts on. In December, it’s more like three or four.  

           I love eating in layers. 

          Watch me eat pizza – I never eat it all together.  First I eat the toppings, then I eat the cheese, then I eat the sauce, then I eat the crust.  I’ve never eaten an entire slice of pizza without dissecting it. 

           I love working in layers. 

          It doesn’t matter if its pastels or paint, I love building layers to achieve the effect I’m looking for.  

          This adoration of layers and the layering process also exhibits itself in my preferences for other artists. It should come as no surprise to those of you who know photography that my favorite photographer is Jerry Uelsmann. Uelsmann is the master of composite photography. 

Here is one of my favorite Uelsmann photographs:

Jerry Uelsmann – Contrary to Reason 2006

          I bet the first thing that popped into your head had to do with digital manipulation and Photoshop.  If this is the case – you’re dead wrong.  Uelsmann’s popularity began to rise in the late 1960’s – way before Photoshop and digital photography made their way into the art world.  Uelsmann’s process, similar to my own, was tied to the darkroom.  There he layered negatives and used upwards of 12 enlargers at a time to achieve the special effects displayed in his surrealist images. Though I enjoy all of Uelsmann’s work, here are a couple of my other favorites: 

Jerry Uelsmann - Untitled 1987

Jerry Uelsmann - Untitled 2008

          I latched onto Uelsmann in my first photo class during my freshman year of college.  Being a proponent of using analogue photography over digital photography for artist endeavors, Uelsmann’s process provided me the perfect solution.  I started sandwiching negatives and blocking off parts of the paper while printing so I could print another image in that area.  

          When I got to my second photo class – I experienced the faux pas I discussed in my “My Favorite Mistake” entry.  Because of my experiences in the ortho litho darkroom and my fascination with Uelsmann – I started experimenting with layering images after they were printed.  One prints ortho litho images on “film” so in a sense I was still layering images on film – just at the end of the printing process instead of the beginning.  

          I always use a B & W fiber based print as my base and layer litho prints on top of them.   Again, one of the images I including in “My favorite Mistake” illustrates this.  The bottom layer is a B & W print of a cross made out of sticks laying in the snow on the bank of a stream.  The top layer is a solarized Litho print from a studio shot I took of my husband when we first started dating.   Here are a couple of other images I created using the same process: 

Untitled 2003

                I enjoy layering different images, as well as copies of the same image.  The image above is a stained glass window in a park in Kingston NY overtop of an image of two children playing in the park. The image below is cliche – but I had loads of fun with the series.  It was taking in a cemetary in Oneonta NY.

Amanda Resting - 2003

           Using copies of the same images creates a dream like effect, and my dreams are my main source of inspiration for both my art and my writing. There are two images below that demonstrate this.  They were both part of my senior project in college, which consisted of nine images – eight of which were created using this layering process.  The image on the top is of a memorial in Auschwitz. The same image is used three times – one FB print and two litho prints – to create this image. The image on the bottom shows a bridge at Lake Minnewaska in NY.  In this photo I used the same image of the bridge twice, but offset them slightly to create the hazy effect.

Auschwitz Memorial - 2005

Bridge at Minnewaska - 2005

            I may not have taken as much time to create these images as Uelsmann took to create his – but I can tell you they took some time.  What I find sad is that fact that these images would have taken me about five minutes using Photoshop.  This raises the question, at least in my mind, of is it the finished image or the process that places value on the work.  If I were I to sell my art work – something that took me as long as these compound prints did would cost far more than something that took five minutes on a computer.  Does the process alone raise the artistic value?  Does it make it a “better” photograph? 

            I honestly do not know. 

            There is one thing I can say about the difference between analogue and digital photography.  Anything that can be done digitally can be done using analogue techniques – it just takes a little more time and a little more skill.    

            So is the time and effort worth it? Should I save myself hours of time and just switch to digital? Maybe I should – but I doubt that will ever happen. 

            Jerry Uelsmann has been quoted as saying: “I am sympathetic to the current digital revolution and excited by the visual options created by the computer. However, I feel my creative process remains intrinsically linked to the alchemy of the darkroom.” 

            Mr. Uelsmann – I totally agree.

My sculptural medium of choice is stone.  It stubborn and cold, but once you start working with it warms up to you.  Not much is left up to chance when it comes to stone, and most shaping is the result of careful planning and effort.  Basically, it’s the perfect medium for a control freak.

Because basically, I am a control freak.

Much to my chagrin, some of the most amazing things I’ve created are attributed to a total lack of control.  

[This is where I introduce my favorite mistake.]

My first experiences developing and printing on Ortho Litho film were disastrous.  I was the photo lab manager and one of the stronger photo students so I could hardly admit I was doing something incorrectly. I blamed it on the chemicals, changed them all and tried again.  Same result.  So I then blamed it on the film being bad. I mean - come on –  I had control of everything and I had not made a mistake. Right? Right. So I threw the print that wasn’t developing from the developer into the garbage can, and called it a day.

An hour later…

My friend comes running out of the Litho darkroom yelling at me to look at what I had thrown away.  The picture, which was a portrait of my younger cousin, had started to develop as the developer sat on it in the garbage can.  I just hadn’t waited long enough.   [Insert karma slapping me in the face here.]  Being in the trash can, and not the developing tray, the developer left on the film turned didn’t develop it all the way – it only developed the darkest shadows. It also left various deposits in shades of brown and amber while creating ridiculously awesome patterns and textures on the film.  What you see above is a scan of the piece of film as it looked taken out of the trash. 

After scanning it, I decided to use it as a contact negative in the color darkroom.  I sandwiched the piece of film between two pieces of glass and placed it on top of color paper.  I didn’t plan the color settings – I just turned knobs as I saw fit – and I got an array of various colored copies. 

And because of this I found myself letting go of my need for control little by little.  It led me to purposely let things get out of hand on occasion.  I took this route with one of my other Ortho Litho projects and created one my favorite images. [This is an example of a layered FB & Litho image as well.]

As my need for total control lessens I find myself more willing to let other view or read my work, I’ve found that my writing has improved, and I’ve found that overall it makes the process of making art more of a hobby and less of a job or task. 

And hey- isn’t that the point?