Katherine Keenum

Okay, a thirteenth-century artist's notebook has nothing to do with either Where the Light Falls or ANONYMITY, but it certainly brings together my training as a medievalist and my current interest in artists' methods of composition. It happened that this morning, after reading James Gurney's post on his own recent Imagine FX article on composition, I pursued a reference to Villard in a book about books and landed to my delight on the Bibliothèque Nationale's digitization of the entire album (BnF MS Fr 19093)—page after page of jottings, mnemonics, pattern drawings, etc. If you read French, you can click on any leaf and call up a discussion of that page. For the BnF's 1906 printed edition, click here.

As for me, I'd better get back to writing ficiton. Read More 

Flat roofs on buildings have been used as living space ever since the first towns in the Mediterranean world. New York at the turn of the 20th C was no different. Tenants in the crowded tenements of the Lower East Side went to the roofs to cool off. Elaborate roof gardens graced hotels, theaters,  Read More 

The effects of rebuilding in Paris were very much in evidence when Jeanette arrived there in 1878. Even more visible were the effects of New York's growth in 1908. Read More