All around the globe, dog-eared paperbacks sit on nightstands waiting to postpone their readers' rest. From the salacious to the literary, novels entertain and inspire with plots to follow and characters to root for. Though we take that dog-eared paperback for granted in the twenty-first century, suc

Charming, Epic, Medieval fiction, Pioneering, Sprawling

Takahashi is a gardener of junk. With the utmost patience she tenderly weeds through a crazy jumble of found objects -- clocks, hammers, old paint buckets, scraps of paper, electric fans -- and arranges them in a most fastidious manner. While her installations look like the scene of an accident or a

Chance, Eclectic, Loose, Neurotic, Sprawling, Young british artists

John Ashbery has influenced more poets than almost any other author since 1950. Dean Young, Jane Miller, David Shapiro, and many younger poets take up the pen from within his tradition of shifting tone, quirky imagery, and timeless narratives. His innovations seem to have arrived simultaneously with

Absurd, Fleeting, Improvised, Loose, New york school poetry, Overflowing, Sprawling

Trained as a filmmaker Lafia's work is informed by a joyous engagement with the formal qualities of artistic practice. In his own words, his "work is an exploration of how discourse constructs itself." His early experimental films -- "Auto-re-tour" and "Fini La Guerre" -- investigate the tensions be

Avant-garde film, Chance, Collage, Ebullient, Excessive, Loose, Net art, Open-ended, Playful, Sprawling, Wise assy