Here is a gift book that sets out to stir our imagination in brand new ways. Jeff Hoke has been designing museum exhibits for the last 25 years and has recently been awarded the 2003 Curator's Award for Exhibit Design at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, where he holds the position of Senior Exhibit Designer. He is also a talented artist with a huge interest in physics, metaphysics, philosophy, alchemy, and esoteric wisdom. All of these talents have been put to work in this extraordinary book that can serve as a catalyst to your innate curiosity and creativity.
As a tour guide, Hoke beckons us on a journey that promises to help us:
• Discover — forgotten things in the world around us.
• Recover — forgotten things in the world within you.
• Uncover — forgotten things not in this world at all.
The book is a little hard to explain; you really have to see it to believe it! There are eight Exhibit Halls and for each one, there are exercises, diagrams, mini-essays, and on a fold-out poster containing all the forms you need to construct a model (with detailed instructions for people who think they can't do something like that.)
The halls are The Hall of Technology with a Model Universe; The Hall of Aquaria with a Model Scrying Mandala; The Zoological Garden with a Model Theatre of the Mind; The Observatory with a Model Hypnotrope; The Mausoleum of History with a Model Muse-a-um; The Laboratory of Science and Faith with a Model Path of Destiny Peep Show; The Gallery to the Arts with a Model Carousel of Life; and the Entrance, Exit, and Circulation Desk. These sections also represent the eight stages of the alchemical process.
Hoke calls this voyage through memory and time "a ray of hope in a dreary world." We love the way he has playfully mixed the search for meaning with art, science, and mysticism in an effort to bring alive our sense of wonder.
