Artist Josie Iselin celebrates the diversity and beauty of nature with
her exquisite portraits of seashells. Like her extremely popular Beach
Stones and Leaves & Pods, Seashells is not a field guide but an artful
and informative portrayal of a beloved part of our natural world. While
it draws upon unparallelled shell collections, Seashells balances the
exotic with the familiar, from tropical corals and rare fossils to
everyday clamshells and barnacles. As in her previous books, Iselin
arranges these precious natural objects into striking images, which she
produces on a flatbed scanner. In her introduction and captions, marine
geologist and paleontologist, Sandra J. Carlson introduces the reader to
seashells in all their variety, explaining why they look as they do.
Both an art book and a contemplation of nature, Seashells combines
aesthetic delight in natural things with scientific fact and
philosophical wonder.