Jim Isermann

I think John Sonsini may be the greatest portrait painter in the country.
— David Pagel, Los Angeles Times

What I want is for the portrait to be like a thumbprint on a water glass—a broad reminder that someone has been there.
— John Sonsini

When art critic David Pagel realized he had written five reviews about John Sonsini over the past thirty years, this book project was born. Even though he had been covering the work of the Los Angeles-based painter for three decades, they had never met until they began collaborating on this project. The unique, intimate compilation brings together an extensive essay by Pagel—including facsimile reproductions of the original five articles—along with illustrations, plates, and archival pieces that cover Sonsini’s artistic trajectory, from early works to his most recent watercolors and large-scale commissions. Broad Reminders provides a rambling, joyful, engaging look into the world of art and artists, critics, and creators.

Albert Frey was in love with the desert and with architecture. By fully integrating his designs with nature in the small desert town of Palm Springs, Frey’s work became iconic on an international scale.
— Brad Dunning

A comprehensive volume on Swiss-American architect Albert Frey (1903-1998), Inventive Modernist tracks the scope and significance of Frey’s career, from his early days in Paris working with Le Corbusier to his rise as the iconic architect of Palm Springs. His unique “simple but severe” style of Desert Modernism cemented his legacy as one of the most influential architects, not only in California, but also in the United States and the world.

With full access to Frey’s various archives, the book provides many rare and previously unexhibited architectural models, drawings, films, photographs, and furniture, and offers an exceptional visual guide that goes far beyond the mere documentation of finished buildings. New academic research, in-depth essays, and a thorough, illustrated listing of the architect’s projects between 1925 and 1997, serve to contextualize Frey’s relevance today while securing his importance as a twentieth-century architectural master. Published to coincide with a far-reaching exhibition at Palm Springs Art Museum, Albert Frey: Inventive Modernist presents a scrupulously researched and lavishly illustrated publication on the architect’s life and work.

For all our sakes, I hope Deborah Roberts continues to stake a claim, through her work, for a more expansive view of Black children.

– Dawoud Bey

Deborah Roberts: 20 Years of Art/Work provides the definitive look at the artist’s practice over the past two decades. With newly commissioned texts and a thorough dive into Roberts’ archive, this monograph offers a comprehensive view of one of today’s most significant artists and social observers. An extensive plate section is accompanied by a personal, heartfelt foreword from Dawoud Bey on “the tragic mischaracterization of Black children”; an insightful essay from Ekow Eshun on the social and political histories of innocence, race, and the fractured nature of the contemporary Black experience; a celebratory tribute from Carolyn Jean Martin on the musicality, humility, and generosity of Roberts’ practice; and a free-ranging conversation between Roberts and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis.

Since the beginning of her artistic career, otherness has been at the center of Roberts’ consciousness. Her early ideals of race and beauty were shaped by and linked through Renaissance art and fashion magazines— mythical, heroic, beautiful, and powerful images that embodied a particular status not afforded equally to anyone Roberts knew. Influencing the way she viewed herself and other African Americans, those images led her to investigate the way their identities had been imagined and shaped by societal interpretations of beauty. Having one’s identity dismantled, marginalized and regulated to non-human status demanded action. This led Roberts to critically engage image-making in art history and pop-culture, and ultimately grapple with whatever power and authority these images have over the female figure.  

Dorothy Fratt was published in conjunction with the first major US museum exhibition on the prolific, yet underrecognized, American painter Dorothy Fratt (1923–2017). Born in Washington, DC, and associated with the Washington Color School in the early 1950s, Fratt moved to Arizona in 1958 and would go on to forge her own style of abstraction more closely tied to the Southwest United States. Although Fratt’s paintings are often classified as color field and Abstract Expressionist, her use of color and expression of her surroundings evolved into a prolific body of work that idiosyncratically emotes landscape, atmosphere, gesture, and mood on her own terms.

Spanning five decades of the artist’s oeuvre, Dorothy Fratt includes a selection of foundational early works alongside numerous paintings that exemplify Fratt’s vibrant and distinct style of abstraction. The book also features an extended biography, ephemera from Fratt’s life, and a conversation with contemporary artists Teresa Baker, Caroline Kent, and Rebecca Ward.