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Echoes - The Drawings Of Michael William Kaluta
(2000 - Vanguard Productions)

(compliled by Dean Motter & J. David Spurlock) A smaller 7-by-10.5-inch volume. At the time, Vanguard had produced a number of books in their Popular Artist Sketchbook series and our subject here was touted as the launch of their new Drawings art-book series, but yet it seems 'only' another sketchbook. That is to say that I detect a small-ish percentage, less than a fifth, of 'finished' drawings. What is nice is that the captioning does identify what each sketch, rough, study, thumbnail, or preliminary displayed was in service of. Out of 110 pages, 74 feature a large reproduction and another 24 gather two-or-more smaller ones. On these counted pages there are 18 instances of a display flowing across the center-gutter and, while not ideal, almost all remain acceptable in that presentation. Note that the hardback's dustcover features two nice paintings on the front & back, but they are not shown within. I did find that the text, a detailed overview of his career to that date, accompanied by a good-sized interview, to be more extensive coverage of Kaluta than I've yet seen anywhere else. Only WINGS OF TWILIGHT stands as a better collection of his work and there are no duplicates here from what it contains.