600 Moons

"Philip McCracken is a native son of the Northwest whose art may be regional, but it is never provincial. McCracken's sculpture has been informed as much by the time he spent working in Henry Moore's studio and during a sojourn in New York as a young artist as it has been by the flora, fauna, and climate of Western Washington. Famous for his birds, he refuses to be pinned down to one theme or medium; McCracken's probing creativity and quest for both significant subjects and formal perfection have also manifested in art about war, humorous tableaux, future fossils, and in paintings and sculptures of the night sky." "Published in conjunction with a retrospective exhibition organized by the Museum of Northwest Art, 600 Moons: Fifty Years of Philip McCracken's Art is the first comprehensive publication on the artist since 1980. Deloris Tarzan Ament recounts McCracken's formative experiences on Puget Sound and traces his career from early studies of art to his first solo show in New York in 1960 to the present. The text incorporates numerous unpublished artist statements, and chronicles a diverse body of work concerned with the profound mysteriousness of nature - and humanity. 600 Moons establishes McCracken as an important link between contemporary Northwest art and influential artists of the "Northwest School" who were his friends and exemplars. The book will be an important addition to the libraries of collectors, students, and lovers of contemporary American art and of the Pacific Northwest."--BOOK JACKET.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.