In the heat of the summer, people all across the country are dreaming of vacations; car trips, cook-outs, crashing waves and, of course, long days spent on warm sand. Alicia G. Longwell of the Parrish Art Museum also thought about the significance of sand when she created Sand: Memory, Meaning, and Metaphor. The book is a collection of prose, poetry and works of art ranging from paintings to elaborate multimedia constructions and traditionally-built sandcastles. Longwell focuses on the effect of sand on artists and their work including Pablo Picasso, William Merritt Chase, and Jackson Pollock, who is pictured on the beach with Lee Krasner. She also plays with sand, literally, using images of sand encased in glass to give the reader the opportunity to ponder the origin of glass. The focus of the book is far-reaching yet unified. One is left feeling that the final point is this: sand inspires. Children building castles with water-filled moats on Virginia Beach, glass blowers in the hot shop at TCC Portsmouth, and the artists and writers featured in this book all have one thing in common; as they allowed grains of sand flow through their fingers they were inspired to create. - By Library Assistant Sara Mason
