Publications

Over the years I have produced a few books, and I plan to write a few more. Like my podcast, it's one of the ways I try to encourage the dissemination of knowledge concerning figurative sculpture and its history, in order that it has a future.

My books are self-published, through the self-publishing company Lulu Press. You can buy them on Amazon or any other online book retailer, or you can buy directly from Lulu Press by clicking the link below.

Sculpting from Life - A studio Manual of the Sight-Size Method

On Sculpture, By Leon Battista Alberti

Translation and commentary by Jason Arkles

Leon Battista Alberti's important treatise, Della Statua, is rarely translated into English, and when it is, it is translated from the point of view of literary history and academic scholarship, which completely disregards the reason Alberti wrote it in the first place- to educate students of sculpture.

Here, presented for the first time in English in the form of a practical sculpture manual, as On Sculpture by Leon Battista Alberti, the text is illustrated both with images which have accompanied the text in historical editions, as well as new images illustrating various topics, methods, and devices Alberti describes. Each section of the book is accompanied by a detailed commentary which explains finer points of Alberti's work, and place his teachings in both a contemporary and historical context.

I named my own teaching studio, Studio Della Statua, after this important work. This book planted the seeds for the rational, mathematical and optical approach to sculpture pursued by centuries of sculptors and is closely allied to the methods I practice and teach.