The Only Art Dictionary
You'll Ever Need
Everything you ever wanted to know about art, when you hear pompous 
critics pontificating their vast knowledge has now been compiled into a useful handbook. The dictionary is patterned after those foreign language phrase books, but there are also in-depth articles describing the 'how' of artistic processes. The entire contents are written in plain language and designed to help you bluff your way through even the most didactic drivel displayed when dealing with artists and art galleries.
In addition, I've refurbished the entire book in a color format that can be easily (and cheaply) downloaded, so that you can used your newfound, artistic vocabulary and practice before mingling with the big dogs at the galleries.
And to top that all off, the Rev has created an awesome CD that includes the color version and hundreds of my works in a slide show. But the only way to get that, at present is through savannah.lee@gmail.com.
The Books
That Freed My Soul
It all starte
d with learning about a little thing called NaNoWriMo, which consists of 60,000 authors around the world challenging themselves to write a novel in the month of November. My life story is an intricate one, and some of its parts are things about which I do not wish to think too long - for my own sanity. Much of it has to be embellished to protect my own anonymity. So, what better way (after promising myself for 20 years) to get the darned thing done but through a marathon.
What emerged was a largely, autobiographical novel that contains the good and the bad parts of growing up in a Mennonite community. The plus side was that, no matter how gruesome it was to get to the end of each section, it was exponentially that cathartic as well. I knew that putting the stories down would release me from their life-long grip. Volume 3, the final chapters, will be available sometime this year. I promise.
The Books
That Fed My Imagination
It was something I had promised my Father I would write . . . someday. All those stories he told me as I grew up, the discoveries he had made that caused him to doubt the rigorous, religious dogma of his community kept coming back to haunt my own searches. During a period in my life when I had lost almost everything, I spent my last Unemployment check on a Brothers Word Processor and finished the thing in 2 sleepless weeks. It took me another 20 years to hone the necessary skills to make it readable, and to decide that it must be 2 books.
Apocryphon means the one true book; Mary did not have the option of having hers included in a male Bible. When a beautiful, Chinese woman is summoned to the Vatican to translate an ancient text, it stirs a chain of events that put her life in grave danger. The Novel (right) is that story and Mary's words are mixed into the text. The Book (left) is the translation of Mary's words only, so that they can be read and ruminated without the back story.
When I finally got them done to my satisfaction, I was afraid that someone would say I'd plagarized Dan Brown. Let me assure you, this was written many moons before his hit the press and comes from a feminine aspect he refused to entertain. Rather than ask WWJD?, I ask "What would Mary do?"
The Books
That Fed the Other Hungers
Have A Cup of Coffee at the Gates of Dawn: Simply for pure joy, I gathered all the poetry together that had been lining my drawers over the years. Some won prizes; many are in the archives of my alma mater; all of them still make me feel
good about having written what I did and chronologize the journey as much as the autobiography does. And speaking of feeding . . .
I could not compose a cookbook of my ancestors' fabulous recipes without including all the lore that went with them. Pennsylvania dutch life is rich with meaning. You will find everything from home remedies to the secret messages of hex signs within The Plain Folk Scrapbook.
Next in the works and due to be published before summer is a cookbook that was inspired by, and a compilation of, teaching my son how to co
ok. He's a wiz with anything Asian, moreso than myself, but what he wanted me to convey was that anyone can cook - anywhere. It's not magic; it's simply knowing the tricks, like with art or writing, or whatever. So, this is for the novice and the medium and for people in tiny apartments who would like to entertain and impress. Basic cooking jargon and fabulous dinners for just a few diners will be no problem with The Apartment-Sized Cookbook.
“I’m biting a bullet, and I’m sick of the taste of metal in my mouth.”
The Magdalen Martyrs, Ken Bruen