By Yvonne Hamilton
The Sketchbook of Thomas Blue EagleChronicle Books, Gay Matthaei. Chronicle Books, $16.95 (72pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-2908-3A companion to The Ledgerbook of Thomas Blue Eagle, The Sketchbook of Thomas Blue Eagle by Gay Matthaei and Jewel Grutman, illus. by Adam Cvijanovic, begins in 1885, when Blue Eagle is ""eighteen winters"" after his graduation from the Carlisle School. Cvijanovic's pictographic illustrations record Blue Eagle's meeting with Buffalo Bill Cody and the inception of his Wild West Show. As a plus, a faux-Remington portrait of Blue Eagle makes an appearance here.
Richard Diebenkorn: Figurative Works on PaperChronicle Books, Richard Diebenkorn, Barnaby Conrad III. Chronicle Books, $29.95 (116pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-4219-8This chapbook of uncollected figurative images by West Coast artist Richard Diebenkorn, known mostly for his abstractions, brings together a body of work that precedes his most famous Ocean Park paintings, and perhaps sheds some new light on them. Throughout all, however, the images display confident brushwork and coloration, and a searching, complex relationship to their subjects. Numerous of them bear a freshness that would fit in the contemporary art world's most recent return to drawing. Although in some ways minor to Deibenkorn's oeuvre, even these smaller efforts have their gravity in the context of his imposing legacy.
Honey, from Hive to HoneypotChronicle Books, Sue Style. Chronicle Books, $14.95 (120pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-0286-4Beekeepers, cooks and honey-lovers will cherish this charming, attractively designed volume. Style ( A Taste of Switzerland ), a cooking teacher and cookbook author, first learned about bees and honey-making from her neighbors in Alsace. Following the beekeeper through the year, she discusses the medicinal uses of honey and devotes a chapter to its taste. We learn about ``flea'' honey (made by bees from honeydew secreted by aphids), single-flower honey and that 181 chemical substances have been identified in honey.
Dancer with Bruised KneesChronicle Books, Lynne McFall. Chronicle Books, $18.95 (215pp) ISBN 978-0-8118-0787-6``It happened in my 40th year that I fell into a depression so deep that even the thought of sex could not raise me from it.'' Sarah Blight is a photographer who has lost one eye in a barroom brawl over an ex-lover. Even while she mourns his loss, Sarah secretly hopes that she will reunite with her ex-husband Rich, though he has remarried. McFall writes with poetic intensity, her precisely honed prose powered by striking imagery.
