Dream Dance: The Art Of Ed Emshwiller
(2019 - Anthology Editions)

Up to the present, there was only one book focusing on the work of Ed Emshwiller and it unfortunately didn't make up on to The List here because so much of its oxygen was taken by honoring his talented authoress partner and also celebrating his experimental-filmmaker career (which he himself would have considered predominant). Now, this volume comes along, developed to accompany a recent Emshwiller exhibition (that itself seemed dominated by its film program) and *hallelujah* it delivers enough illustrative art to not fall prey to the same problem. Roughly 10-by-8-inches in size with 176 pages, with 19 large reproductions of his published SF-Fantasy work and another 36 pages each pulling together four images, mostly more book & magazine covers. And there's an additional 30 pages that present private pen/ink/marker drawings by him, large & small, that I think any fan would find fascinating. Know that this is one of those rare art books that is printed on non-glossy stock, and while some may be put-off by that, I feel it's an allowable cost to get this additional collection into existence. Don't get me wrong, there's still room for a needed gallery book with 2 to 3 times the page-count given us here, with the great reproduction-quality of the first book discussed (Nonstop Press' INFINITY X TWO). Anyway, I don't mean to slight the effort that these contributors made to explore his film work and his subsequent life of artistic-leadership & mentoring at CalArts, which truly seems to be everything he wanted.

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