By SIU Press

“In 2003, Fred Delcomyn imagined his backyard of two-and-a-half acres, farmed for corn and soybeans for generations, restored to tallgrass prairie.
“Over the next 17 years, Delcomyn, with help from his friend James L. Ellis scored, seeded, monitored, reseeded, and burned these acres into prairie.
“In A Backyard Prairie, they document their journey and reveal the incredible potential of a backyard to travel back to a time before the wild prairie was put into plow rows.
“It has been said, ‘Anyone can love the mountains, but it takes a soul to love the prairie.’
“This book shows us how.

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Posted on June 30, 2021

By Victor Araneda Jure/The Conversation

Typically, comics are considered a silent medium. But while they don’t come with an aural soundtrack, comics have a unique grammar for sound.
From Wolverine’s SNIKT! when unsheathing his claws, to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 23 in The Death of Stalin (later made into a film) the use of “textual audio” invites comics readers to hear with their eyes.

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Posted on June 10, 2021

By Popkin/Boing Boing

One of my friends gave me a copy of the book Siteless: 1001 Building Forms, by François Blanciak, as a gift a few years ago, and I use it often for reference images and inspiration for my drawings. Although I’m not an architect and this is an architecture-inspired book, the forms in it are great for drawing inspiration, creature parts, or just fun eye candy.

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Posted on June 1, 2021

By Chris Gibson and Andrew Warren/The Conversation

Musicians are often concerned about environmental problems, but entangled in them through the materials used in their instruments. The guitar industry, which uses rare woods from old-growth trees, has been a canary in the coal mine – struggling with scandals over illegal logging, resource scarcity and new environmental regulations related to trade in endangered species of trees.
We spent six years on the road tracing guitar-making across five continents, looking at the timber used – known in the industry as tonewoods for their acoustic qualities – and the industry’s environmental dilemmas. Our goal was to start with the finished guitar and trace it to its origin places, people and plants.
We first visited guitar factories in Australia, the United States, Japan and China. There we observed materials and manufacturing techniques. From factories, we visited the sawmills that supply them. And then we journeyed further, to forests, witnessing the trees from which guitars are made.

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Posted on June 1, 2021