Selected Works by Kerry Mitchell

I asked Santa to bring me "Selected Works" by Kerry Mitchell. But, I must have been bad, because he didn't leave it for me Christmas morning. However, my lovely wife did get it for me for my birthday.

It is 100 pages long. It contains a little over 100 images. The range of images contain within is quite impressive. It covers images Kerry has made over the last 10 years. Kerry includes brief descriptions of the Mandelbrot Set, Julia Sets, and Newton's method. He also includes some space-filling curve images, geometric images, and photographic manipulations. I particularly liked the geometric images and photographic manipulations.

Kerry's style generally results in simple, yet striking images. He focuses on the beauty of the math, and less on artistic use of layering that some seem to like to constantly complain about. However, many of the images are comprised of many individual layers. This is not really that obvious unless you understand the techniques he commonly uses. The images are very much art, regardless.

The quality is very good. I wouldn't call it excellent. It was printed by lulu.com. It is 7.4x9.7, perfect bound. It is not printed as a photo book. As a result, the vibrancy of the images is not what it would be if printed as a photo book. However, most of the images don't suffer much from this, as there are many black and white, and limited palette images.

My main complaint is that the book size and format lead to smaller images. I would prefer a larger format that would allow for larger images. However, this would result in a more expensive book. So, I understand the trade off.

I would also prefer to have the book printed as a photo book. I think many of the images would benefit from being printed more as photographs.

You can get the book from Amazon.com. It is now listed for $35.36, down from the original $44.95.

All in all, it is a great example of a great collection of images from a very accomplished fractal artist. It is well worth the money. As I keep saying, I hope that more artists will self-publish a book of their works and make them available.

Well done, Kerry.

Now, I'm just waiting for him to come to town on his book tour to sign my book like he promised he would if I bought a copy. :-)