Holy guacamole fun times! This week Kathryn Born interviews
Natalie van Straaten. Mark Staff Brandl talks about Jeff Hoke's kickass
book-website-museum Museum
of Lost Wonder. Mike
Benedetto gives a DOUBLE FEATURE REVIEW. Lastly there is a special bonus treat
at the end of this weekâ s show, it is a surprise.






Natalie van Straaten has been a professional writer on arts
subjects for more than 30 years and founded Chicago Gallery News in 1983. A
curator, educator, administrator and organizer, she serves on various arts
advisory boards and is a frequent juror in art competitions. She served as
Executive Director of the Chicago Coalition for Arts in Education (1983-1986),
and co-directed an art gallery for fourteen years.






Shamelessly and apologetically lifted from Publishers
Weekly









Starred Review. Every now and then, a book comes
along that's almost impossible to categorize, like Hoke's beautifully
illustrated gem, a strange marriage of alchemical lore and psychology, science
and "wonder." Hoke, an artist and a senior exhibition designer at
California's Monterey Bay Aquarium, writes that the eclectic museums and
curiosity cabinets of the 1600s inspired him, and that he wants to return us to
a time before "science became a belief system unto itself," a time
when artist-alchemist-scientists were able to search for inner truth via
mystical experiences and experiments without being ridiculed. Guided by the
Greek muses and lured by his lovely color illustrations, readers are beckoned
into seven "exhibition halls," named for the stages of alchemical
transformation from base matter to divinely inspired knowledge. Each exhibit
also includes a pull-out interactive paper model, such as a
"Do-It-Yourself Model of the Universe" in chapter one, where Hoke
playfully addresses various creation myths. The chapter on dream states,
visions and hypnosis is particularly fascinating. This is a book to linger
over; it gradually reveals itself as a sly philosophical meditation on human
consciousness, bringing in concepts from Tibetan Buddhism and quantum physics.
Coming soon! Rodney Graham!!!