A portrait of a young artist's formative years studying sculpture in Paris, recounted in her own words Angela Gregory is considered by many the doyenne of Louisiana sculpture and is a notable twentieth century American sculptor. In A Dream and a Chisel, Angela Gregory and Nancy Penrose explore Gregory's desire, even as a teenager, to learn the art of cutting stone and to become a sculptor. Through sheer grit and persistence, Gregory achieved her dream of studying with French artist Antoine Bourdelle, one of Auguste Rodin's most trusted assistants and described by critics of the era as France's greatest living sculptor. In Bourdelle's Paris studio, Gregory learned not only sculpting techniques but also how to live life as an artist. Her experiences in Paris inspired a prolific sixty-year career in a field dominated by men. After returning to New Orleans from Paris, Gregory established her own studio in 1928 and began working in earnest. She created bas-relief profiles for the Louisiana State Capitol built in 1932 and sculpted the Bienville Monument, a bronze statue honoring the founder of New Orleans, in the 1950s. Her works also include two other monuments, sculptures incorporated into buildings, portrait busts, medallions, and other forms that appear in museums and public spaces throughout the state. She was the first Louisiana woman sculptor to achieve international recognition, and, at the age of thirty-five, became one of the few women recognized as a fellow of the National Sculpture Society. Gregory's work appeared in group shows at many prestigious museums and in exhibitions, including the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne in Paris, the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the National Collection of Fine Arts in the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This memoir is based on Penrose's oral history interviews with Gregory, as well as letters and diaries compiled before Gregory's death in 1990. A Dream and a Chisel demonstrates the importance of mentorships, offers a glimpse into the realities of an artist's life and studio, and captures the vital early years of an extraordinary woman who carved a place for herself in Louisiana's history.

Bernard Piffaretti on Pierrot, formerly known as Gilles by Jean-Antoine Watteau -- Ana Prvacki on Grotto of Sarrazine near Nans-sous-Sainte-Anne by Gustave Courbet -- Pipilotti Rist on Shiva Nataraja from Tamil Nadu -- Julião Sarmento on Portrait of a young woman by Domenico Ghirlandaio -- Mithu Sen on a red sandstone torso from Harappa -- Stephen Shore on the Studiolo from the Ducal Palace in Gubbio -- Shinique Smith on Canyon by Robert Rauschenberg -- Kishio Suga on Tokyo stone line by Richard Long -- Do Ho Suh on Kumgang Mountain by Jeong Seon -- Diana Thater on Video flag Z by Nam June Paik -- Rikrit Tiravanija on Venus of Bangkok by Montien Boonma -- Luc Tuymans on The Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele by Jan Van Eyck -- Bill Viola on The Annunciation by Dieric Bouts -- Edmund de Waal on The interior of the Grote Kerk at Haarlem by Pieter Saenredam -- Gillian Wearing on Self-portrait at the age of 63 by Rembrandt --.

In this magically evocative novel, William Maxwell explores the enigmatic gravity of the past, which compels us to keep explaining it even as it makes liars out of us every time we try. On a winter morning in the 1920s, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois. A man named Lloyd Wilson has been killed. And the tenuous friendship between two lonely teenagers—one privileged yet neglected, the other a troubled farm boy—has been shattered. Fifty years later, one of those boys—now a grown man—tries to reconstruct the events that led up to the murder. In doing so, he is inevitably drawn back to his lost friend Cletus, who has the misfortune of being the son of Wilson's killer and who in the months before witnessed things that Maxwell's narrator can only guess at. Out of memory and imagination, the surmises of children and the destructive passions of their parents, Maxwell creates a luminous American classic of youth and loss.

In 1863, civil war is raging in the United States. Victorine Meurent is posing nude, in Paris, for paintings that will be heralded as the beginning of modern art: Manet's Olympia and Picnic on the Grass. However, Victorine's persistent desire is not to be a model but to be a painter herself. In order to live authentically, she finds the strength to flout the expectations of her parents, bourgeois society, and the dominant male artists (whom she knows personally) while never losing her capacity for affection, kindness, and loyalty. Possessing both the incisive mind of a critic and the intuitive and unconventional impulses of an artist, Victorine and her survival instincts are tested in 1870, when the Prussian army lays siege to Paris and rat becomes a culinary delicacy. Drēma Drudge's powerful first novel Victorine not only gives this determined and gifted artist back to us but also recreates an era of important transition into the modern world.

Contains photographs of sculptures created by Henri Matisse.