Sanda Iliescu teaches art and architecture at the University of Virginia. Educated as an architect, she is a practicing artist who has exhibited her paintings, drawings, and collages in the United States and Europe. She has received numerous awards, among them the Rome Prize.
Just as you cannot tell someone how to fall in love-so the author of this wise, deeply felt, and beautifully written book tells us-you cannot tell people how to look at art. Yet artist, architect, and educator Sanda Iliescu shows us by the example of her penetrating and empathetic way of looking at forms a place to begin. The nine essays in this book will leave the reader feeling both more alert to visual experience and more alive. Joan Ockman, University of Pennsylvania and Visiting Professor, Yale University. In a brilliant book, full of wisdom, I have just read the most beautiful and insightful description of what real design is. Not the usual junk about creation, but that of trial, failure, and evolution, seen in the efforts of a delighted and stubborn boy refashioning sandcastles despite their erasure by waves. This book is not only about looking; it's about seeing clearly. WG Clark, University of Virginia, USA