A Second Wind, Reimagined (Art Resurrected)

A Second Wind is a retrospective arrangement of beautiful new photographs of Jerry Wennstrom’s artwork, by Seattle architectural photographer, Andrew van Leeuwen, and earlier pictures spanning a period of over 50 years.

The book’s 260 pages include rescued images of his destroyed paintings; (in 1979) a creative act of liberation and the turning point of Wennstrom’s life where he gave himself to becoming and living the creation by giving away his possession, abandoning the life of a studio painter, and living a monk-like life for over a decade.

Representing Wennstrom’s “Second Wind” of art, the book also features colorful full-page spreads of the exotic, archetypal carved figures that came later. Wennstrom speaks to the new level of creative freedom by saying in the book; Art abandoned for the meaningful allurement of a higher calling ... and the return to art without compulsion, for no reason at all.

Included in the book are many stories — both art-related and transformational — written by the author along with “creative responses” by over 50 notables who have been impressed with Wennstrom’s works over the decades.

Those responses include stories and creative expressions by and of cultural anthropologists Margaret Mead and Jean Houston; Jungian analysts and scholars Marion Woodman, Claire Dunne, and Corwin Fergus; psychologists/drug researchers Ralph Metzner and Christopher Bache; cosmologist Brian Swimme , storytellers Laura Simms and Vi Hilbert; poet David Whyte, artist Deborah Koff-Chapin and visionary financiers Charlie Hess and Vici Robin; the Dalai Lama’s Gyuto monks, and even legendary chanteuse Lotte Lenya (of The Threepenny Opera and From Russia With Love fame).