CHOICE 1997 Outstanding Academic Books This is the first full-length study in English of Japan's folk performing arts covering such topics as the different categories of presentations, public policies affecting the folk performing arts, performance events within and without communities, and the folk performing arts in literature. Throughout, it addresses issues concerning the survival and preservation of traditional culture in contemporary Japan. Once largely unknown outside of their local community settings, Japan's folk performing arts have today captured universal attention. In Japan, almost every municipality is home to one or more of the diverse dramatic, dance, narrative, and musical presentations that make up the folk performing arts. They can be seen at events that range from long-established festivals to newly created folk-culture and tourist programs. Since the 1920s, a growing body of work by folklorists, theater historians, and other academic specialists, together with literary treatment by well-known authors, brought the folk performing arts into the national cultural spotlight. The postwar Cultural Properties Protection Law conferred on them the status of legally designated cultural assets.

Throughout Massachusetts, artists carry on and revitalise deeply rooted traditions that take many expressive forms - from Native American basketry to Yankee wooden boats, Armenian lace, Chinese seals, and Irish music and dance. This illustrated volume celebrates and shares the work of a wide array of these living artists.

Some of the artists who have won a National Heritage Fellowship between 1982 and 2002: user may click on an index of names, and retrieve biographical information, photographs, voice and music clips, and/or film and video clips on each artist.

Arts as intimate as a piece of needlework or a home altar. Arts as visible as decorative iron, murals, and low riders. Through such arts, members of Tucson's Mexican American community contribute much of the cultural flavor that defines the city to its residents and to the outside world. Now Tucson folklorist Jim Griffith celebrates these public and private artistic expressions and invites us to meet the people who create them. Josefina Lizárraga learned to make paper flowers as a girl in her native state of Nayarit, Mexico, and ensures that this delicate art is not lost. Ornamental blacksmith William Flores runs the oldest blacksmithing business in town, a living link with an earlier Tucson. Ramona Franco's family has maintained an elaborate altar to Our Lady of Guadalupe for three generations. Signmaker Paul Lira, responsible for many of Tucson's most interesting signs, brings to his work a thoroughly mexicano sense of aesthetics and humor. Muralists David Tineo and Luis Mena proclaim Mexican cultural identity in their work and carry on a tradition that has blossomed in the last twenty years. Featuring a foreword by Tucson author Patricia Preciado Martin and a spectacular gallery of photographs, many by Pulitzer prize-winning photographer José Galvez, this remarkable book offers a close-up view of a community rich with tradition and diverse artistic expression. Hecho a Mano is a piñata bursting with unexpected treasures that will inspire and inform anyone with an interest in folk art or Mexican American culture.

Through Jonson's masterpieces explores the intimate confluence of visual art and music that defined twentieth-century modernism.

Folk art still influences everyday art in some surprising ways. Folk Art Fusion shows you how to blend classic subjects with new techniques to create a lovely work of art that is completely unique. Folk Art Fusion explores the colorful combination of art styles and presents them in modern folk art paintings. This is your chance to learn how traditional folk art continues to influence today's painters, and to discover how to create contemporary folk-art paintings yourself! Even if you're new to creating art, Folk Art Fusion makes creating your own works approachable with step-by-step projects. The projects are as varied as they are colorful. You will enjoy painting classic subjects painted with creative techniques and in popular styles, including flower fields, Frida Kahlo, the Tree of Life, a cat, a quaint English cottage, and much more. Colorful, contemporary, and inspirational, Folk Art Fusion allows artists of all skill levels to quickly discover the joy of creating modern, global-inspiredart in this time-treasured genre.

This volume celebrates the richness of folk art in Sweden, from traditional peasant art to modern design. It illustrates the many facets of Swedish style and culture, exploring the ways in which Sweden's traditional heritage and contemporary design and decorative arts are connected.