Between a two-story metallic spaceship, gnarled trees teeming with strangely colored mosses and lichen, and fantastical creatures, the eccentric artworks that comprise the new space at Convergence Station by Meow Wolf (previously) rival those in even the most peculiar sci-fi universe. The immersive, swamp-like installation, which is dubbed “Numina” or the spirit of a place, is one of the anchors of the Santa Fe-based company’s latest undertaking, which showcases more than 70 installations by 300 artists across four floors and 90,000-square-feet. More

Surrounding Black children with jumbled masses of cartoon characters, doodles, and explosions of color, Chicago-based artist Kayla Mahaffey (previously) imagines adolescent daydreams and an array of playtime inventions. She infuses her acrylic paintings with a longing for carefree summer days, mornings spent watching the foibles of favorite animated characters, and hours left open for adventure, capturing feelings of joy and curiosity. Vividly rendered and layered with squiggles and globs of color, the large-scale works find “value in the sugar-coated nostalgia,” which Mahaffey explains: There have been numerous occasions where we omit the truths of our past to only be met with the disappointments of the future, a never-ending cycle that has influenced our current era for the best and the worst. More

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) – SpaceX aimed to blast a billionaire into orbit Wednesday night with his two contest winners and a health care worker who survived childhood cancer. It’s the first chartered passenger flight for Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a big step in space tourism by a private company. ...

Wrapped within the piecey curls surrounding Miho Hirano‘s subjects are twigs, vine fragments, and clusters of pink blossoms. Using a cool color palette tinged with blues, the Japanese artist (previously) paints ethereal, introspective portraits of women enveloped in movement whether through small fish swimming around their torsos or branches growing from under their hair. Hirano tells Colossal that she tends to center her oil-based works around finding harmony and the inevitability of change, particularly in relation to life’s fragile nature. More

Working as Miguel Marquez Outside, artist Michael Pederson (previously) installs signage around urban areas that at first glance, might appear as an average city-issued nameplate or placard. His clever interventions mimic official warnings and notices in design and placement, disguising their witty messages and unusual purposes. In some of his more recent pieces, Pederson dubs a sagging bench the “Endless Waiting Area,” marks a grassy runway as a pigeon terminal, and installs a miniature wonderland down a drainage tube. More

Braving the harsh elements to create a community outside the confines of mainstream society, these portraits introduce us to a motley crew of squatters occupying a corner of the Sonoran Desert.

 To launch its 13th year, a bizarre animation for the 2021 Festival Stop Motion Montréal evokes eerie tropes and superstitions: a drooling pug morphs into an unfriendly black cat, a gardener reveals a sharp scissor hand, and a once-vibrant fire turns into clouds of soot. Set to a lively track by Nick Lavigne that quickly bends into a sinister tone, the claymation teaser by Rome-based animator Gianluca Maruotti opens the festival, which will show 93 short films from September 10 to 19. More

Years in the making, Yannis Karpouzis’ new book powerfully captures a sense of time stood still and the overlapping crises that unfolded following the Greek financial disaster of 2009.

Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci reportedly revealed that he would back COVID-19 vaccine mandates for air travel, causing some in the industry to push back this week. Dr. Fauci said in an interview with the “Skimm This” podcast, “if you want to get on a plane and travel ...

Unless they were under a microscope, it would be difficult to see the shimmery barbs of a louse claw or cracks running through a single piece of table salt. The winning entries of the 47th annual Nikon’s Small World Photomicrography Competition unveil these otherwise imperceptible features, showing the unique textures, colors, and shapes in stunning detail. We’ve chosen some of our favorite images below—these include the crystal-like webbing of a slime mold captured by Allison Pollack (previously), the first-prize winning glimpse of an oak leaf by Jason Kirk, and the kaleidoscopic head of a tick revealed by doctors Tong Zhang and Paul Stoodley—and you can find more from this year’s competition on the contest’s site and Instagram. More

If you visit Japan’s Niigata Prefecture during the region’s annual rice harvest, you’re likely to find enormous tarantulas, eagles, and dinosaur-like creatures stalking the bucolic landscape. The towering sculptures are part of the Wara Art Festival, a summertime event that displays massive animals and mythical creations fashioned from the crop’s leftover straw. Traditionally, the byproduct is used as livestock feed, for compost that revitalizes the soil, and to craft household goods like zori sandals, although farmers increasingly have found themselves with a surplus as agricultural technology and culture changes. More

An immersive experience by multimedia artist Jen Stark is coming to Williamsburg. From September 17 through October 24, visitors can experience Stark’s colorful dreamworld Cascade through interactive mind-bending projections, 3D-mapped environments, murals, and sculptures presented across 6,000 square feet of exhibition space at the William Vale Hotel in Brooklyn, New York. Cascade will also introduce a series of NFTs available for auction, as well as $STARK coin, a social token promoting community involvement in the artist’s pursuits. More

Multidisciplinary artist Thierry Mandon casts himself as the subject of his satirical works as he reads in a bed hazardously suspended feet above the ground or sips a glass of wine at a halved dining table. The humorous and discomforting pieces, titled “Inside–Outside” and “Tableau vivant,” respectively, unveil a series of slow, solitary activities that, once outdoors, become a performative spectacle rather than a mundane moment. They speak to Mandon’s “search for harmony and for a stable unity between humans and their environment,” he says, as he literally slices and adheres domestic objects to a building’s facade. More

A fruit-farmer/photographer uses his camera to meticulously record the species he breeds and grows, adding his loving photographic vision to a long lineage of botanical art.

Spanning the 42 St. Connector between Times Square and Bryant Park in New York City are a troupe of dancing figures dressed in vibrant costumes of feather and fur. The ebullient characters are based on the iconic series of Soundsuits by Chicago-based artist Nick Cave (previously) and are the first part of a massive permanent installation titled Each One, Every One, Equal All in the public transit corridor. More

Sprawling from sidewalk to roof and lining the entrance to Annabel’s in London is a luxuriant installation teeming with ferns, florals, and a flock of vibrant, oversized birds hovering nearby. Evocative of an abundant rainforest habitat, the staggering piece is part of the club’s inaugural Annabel’s for The Amazon initiative, which launches later this month in collaboration with One Tree Planted and The Caring Family Foundation. Together, their goal is to combat deforestation by planting one million trees by March 2023, a number that equals about 600 hectares of forests otherwise lost, and renew biodiversity in the Araguaia Biodiversity Corridor, which currently consists of patchwork plots destroyed by agriculture, logging, and other devastating projects. More

 An endless loop of lines, ornate motifs, emblems, and historical figures converge in a hypnotic animation by Los Angeles-based director Lachlan Turczan. Paired with Blake Mills’s subdued track “Money Is The One True God,” the music video is comprised of high-resolution scans spliced together in a mesmerizing rotation. The compilation reveals colorful snippets of currency from 23 countries dating from the 1800s to the present day—these include a portrait of rebellion leader Samuel Sharpe on the Jamaican 50 dollar bill, an engraving of Tenochtitlan on a 100 peso, and a kaleidoscopic sunset on China’s 5 yuan—that show how notions of value have evolved over time. More

If you ran into Nitro, Lotto, Sully, or the rest of their troupe on the street, it’d be easy enough to imagine their respective personalities and lifestyles: Nitro is the lax skateboarder who’s always in some state of disarray, Lotto the eccentric and elusive creative, and Sully the file-toting employee who spends her days sitting in meetings, optimizing her schedule, and adding tasks to her to-do list. Easily recognizable and maybe even uncomfortably relatable, the archetypal characters are the creations of artists Alexey Lyapunov and Lena Erlich, who are known for their illustrations and elaborate constructions made from paper. More

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 310,000, a pandemic low and a sign that the surge in COVID-19 cases caused by the delta variant has yet to lead to widespread layoffs. Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that jobless claims dropped ...

Often propped up in a row or symbolically arranged, the ongoing series of charred matches by Wolfgang Stiller are oversized and surreal renditions of the book-bound lookalikes. The German artist sculpts human heads in bright red or gradient-lined black signaling previous use that sit atop the square posts standing about five feet tall. Aptly titled Matchstickmen, the nondescript figures span the gamut of human emotion, ranging from pained expressions and distress to joy and calm. More

Sporting waggish smiles or wide grimaces, Yen Jui-Lin’s wooden carvings are expressive characters that appear straight from a storybook. The Taiwanese craftsman (previously) stretches quirky figures, slices their bodies in half, and sprouts plant-like growths from their heads, exaggerating their cartoonish qualities in a playful and whimsical manner. Whether a character or plant, each work is evidence of his imaginative style and skillful process, which starts with a pencil sketch and gnarly hunk of wood—he shares more about his technique on Instagram—before becoming fully realized form. More

 Simple landscapes dotted with felt trees, miniature power lines, and spool-propelled ambulances become twinkling nightscapes and whimsically glowing scenes in “Connecting Thoughts.” The advertisement, which was created to promote the Japanese infrastructure firm Kandenko’s “Everyone Lights up the Future” message, uses Smart-X conductive thread to send electric currents through figures stitched into gloves and around yarn-based architecture, illuminating each scenario with tiny bulbs. This short piece follows the company’s 2016 ad, which used a conductive marker to create a dazzling pop-up book. More

A spate of public art is flooding the streets of Basildon in Essex, England as part of a new initiative that falls at the intersection of social and environmental justice. Throughout the summer, curators Doug Gillen and Charlotte Pyatt, who are operating together as Re:FRAMED, tasked eight artists with creating large-scale murals and smaller painted works as part of Our Towns: Climate. The resulting pieces reconsider some of today’s most pressing issues through the lens of local art and include a glitched technicolor horse by Aches, INSA’s floral windows, and Michele Curtis’s bright message of support. More

Whether it’s to advance your career or try something new, the Division of Continuing Education at the School of Visual Arts offers more than 170 courses to choose from. Visit sva.edu/ce to view free events and all virtual and on-campus courses, which begin September 20. Online courses are available in: Advertising Animation Art & Activism Design Film Fine Arts Global Arts Illustration and Cartooning Interior Design Photography and Video Professional Development Visual and Critical Studies Visible Futures Lab Visual Narrative Writing Free Virtual Events & Information Sessions Registration Details Course Advice If you need advice or have questions, please email ce@sva.edu to connect with a course advisor. More

Using simple white tulle as her base, Olga Prinku creates lush arrangments of flowers, seedpods, berries, and other organic materials teeming with color and texture. She fastens the preserved florals, which she often grows or forages and then dries herself, to the mesh webbing, encircling an embroidery hoop with elaborate patterns or depicting figurative renderings of birds and individual blooms. Many of the pieces replicate the motifs found in nature or those prevalent in eastern European folklore, which the North Yorkshire-based artist ties to her upbringing in the Republic of Moldova. More