Chilean born artist Basco has been contributing his unique street art and graffiti to public canvases all over South America from a very young age and in recent years he has had a series of successful gallery appearances around the world. Including pages of photos, collages, murals and collaborations, Basco's work captures the heart of his native Chile with his simple yet expressive faces, skeletons and animals reminiscent of religious icons and amulets brought to life through expert use of colour and texture. Donde Esta Mi Corazon represents another triumphant transition from street to gallery from a DIY artist whose talent could not be contained. Basco is certainly among the most relevant living artists in South America.

Brooklyn based Morning Breath, Inc. was founded by Doug Cunningham and Jason Noto in 2002. This design studio delivers an informed visual experience that ignites client brands across a wide array of industries from gaming to advertising, and publishing to clothing. With strong backgrounds in skateboarding (THINK Skateboards), graffiti art and music packaging design (Kanye West, Jay Z, Eminem), Morning Breath's approach transcends pop culture and speaks directly to a younger audience known as being particularly disdainful of blatant demographic marketing and sell-outs. The company was nominated for a Grammy Award for best special music packaging in 2004.

Presents a collection of interviews and profiles spanning 30 years (1976-2006), that reveal an artist who had long been working to establish comics as a serious art form. When the graphic novel Maus: A Survivor's Tale won a Special Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for its vivid depiction of the Holocaust and its effects, critics and mainstream audiences recognized that a comic book was capable of exploring complex aesthetic, moral, and cultural themes. Maus's creator Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) became the most famous alternative cartoonist in America. Art Spiegelman: Conversations reveals an artist who had long been working to establish comics as a serious art form. With his wife Françoise Mouly, he founded and edited RAW-the most in-fluential showcase for avant-garde comics in America-which published early work by such well-established cartoonists as Chris Ware, Kaz, and Gary Panter. Spiegelman's essays and lectures helped to establish that comics have a history and a canon. This collection of interviews and profiles spans 1976-2006 and covers Spiegelman's career as an artist, critic, educator, and art historian. A previously unpublished interview conducted by the volume's editor discusses themes rarely touched upon in earlier profiles.

Explores alternative comics by closely examining long-form comics, in particular the graphic novel. Charles Hatfield argues that these are fundamentally a literary form and offers an extensive critical study of them both as a literary genre and as a cultural phenomenon. In the 1980s, a sea change occurred in comics. Fueled by Art Spiegel- man and Françoise Mouly's avant-garde anthology Raw and the launch of the Love & Rockets series by Gilbert, Jaime, and Mario Hernandez, the decade saw a deluge of comics that were more autobiographical, emotionally realistic, and experimental than anything seen before. These alternative comics were not the scatological satires of the 1960s underground, nor were they brightly colored newspaper strips or superhero comic books. In Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, Charles Hatfield establishes the parameters of alternative comics by closely examining long-form comics, in particular the graphic novel. He argues that these are fundamentally a literary form and offers an extensive critical study of them both as a literary genre and as a cultural phenomenon. Combining sharp-eyed readings and illustrations from particular texts with a larger understanding of the comics as an art form, this book discusses the development of specific genres, such as autobiography and history. Alternative Comics analyzes such seminal works as Spiegelman's Maus, Gilbert Hernandez's Palomar: The Heartbreak Soup Stories, and Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary. Hatfield explores how issues outside of cartooning-the marketplace, production demands, work schedules-can affect the final work. Using Hernandez's Palomar as an example, he shows how serialization may determine the way a cartoonist structures a narrative. In a close look at Maus, Binky Brown, and Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, Hatfield teases out the complications of creating biography and autobiography in a substantially visual medium, and shows how creators approach these issues in radically different ways. Charles Hatfield, Canyon Country, California, is an assistant professor of English at California State University, Northridge. His work has been published in ImageTexT, Inks: Cartoon and Comic Art Studies, Children's Literature Association Quarterly, the Comics Journal, and other periodicals. See the author's Web site at .

This collection of Sarah Albritton’s first touring exhibition includes forty-nine paintings in full colour accompanied by Albritton's stories as transcribed by folklorist Susan Roach. While other self-trained women artists celebrate the glories of the past, there is a stark reality to Albritton's work. Growing up as an African American in north Louisiana in the 1930s and 1940s, Sarah Albritton managed to take care of herself in her own way. On her journey away from the pain of poverty, abuse, and racism she experienced, Sarah Albritton has expressed herself in a variety of artistic modes: food preparation, restaurant decor, yard art, Christmas decorations, autobiographical prose and poetry, and most recently, narrative combined with paintings. This collection of her first touring exhibition includes forty-nine paintings in full color accompanied by Albritton's stories as transcribed by folklorist Susan Roach. Her people are still plowing in the near dark of evening. Her happy children are swimming in polluted streams. There are angels and lightning in her skies. And when she tells her stories, they are direct but never maudlin--""I was born in hell,"" she says. ""I grew up in hell."" But there is a perseverance running through On My Way. The colors here, often grays, browns, and muted greens, rise and converge as do many of her images of people flying to freedom or walking trails. As John Michael Vlach says in his foreword, ""The essential point to be taken here is that Albritton's confidence and her will to survive may owe much to the examples of courage and endurance widely available in the African American community from elders who had known the days of slavery."" Susan Roach, folklorist and professor of English, writes an introduction that merges Albritton's biography with the many arts she practices. Peter Jones, artist and professor of art at Louisiana Tech University, gives us the national context of Albritton's work and traces her development as a practicing creator. Sarah Albritton is a Ruston, Louisiana, restauranteur and owner of Sarah's Kitchen. Born in Arcadia in 1936, she has devoted much of her life to the culinary arts and has conducted cooking demonstrations for the Louisiana World Exposition and the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife.

A charmingly illustrated journey through New York City, neighborhood by neighborhood. All the Buildings in New York is a love letter to New York City, told through James Gulliver Hancock’s unique and charming drawings of the city’s diverse architectural styles and cityscape. His buildings are colorful and chock full of fun and offbeat details, and this book is full of new discoveries as well as old chestnuts for anyone who loves the Big Apple. Organized by neighborhoods, the book features iconic New York buildings, such as the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and Flatiron Building, as well as the everyday buildings that make up New York City—the boutique shops in SoHo, timeless brownstones in Brooklyn, and rows of busy markets in Chinatown. New Yorkers and tourists alike will savor this one-of-a-kind volume that uniquely celebrates the energy and spirit of the city that never sleeps.

A comprehensive look at the greatest comic book villain . . ever. Since his first appearance in 1940’s Batman #1, the Joker stands alone as the most hated, feared, and loved villain in the DC Universe. Though his true origins may be unknown, the Clown Prince of Crime’s psychotic appearances in hundreds of comic books has shaped the way we look at Batman, comic books, and ourselves. Indeed, a hero is only as good as his nemesis, so the Joker’s heinous crimes, including murdering the second Robin and paralyzing Batgirl, have elevated Batman to the highest levels of crime-fighting, and we, the readers, to the finest levels of quality pop-culture entertainment. The Joker is the first retrospective chronicling one of the most groundbreaking and game-changing villains of all time, and contains images from his more than seventy years in comics by comic book artists and writers such as Bob Kane, Bill Finger, Jerry Robinson, Dick Sprang, Grant Morrison, Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman, Geoff Johns, Alan Moore, Brian Bolland, Brian Azzarello, Bruce Timm, and Paul Dini. Also included are images from his various film, television, animated, and video game incarnations, such as the timeless interpretations by Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Heath Ledger, who won his posthumous Oscar for his portrayal of the Joker in 2008’s The Dark Knight. This book is a must-have for fans and anyone who wants to die laughing.

From this innovative, award-winning fashion magazine Nylon comes this one-of-a-kind book about fashion's most exciting source: the street. Nylon here combines its street cred and international expertise to reveal the iconic looks in the seven most fashion-forward cities today: London, Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, Melbourne, Copenhagen and New York.