Part functional walkway and part dramatic sculpture, an outdoor staircase by Alex Chinneck unfurls into individual metallic ribbons as it climbs a brick building in Brighton. The latest work by the British artist, titled “A Spring in Your Step,” is made of galvanized steel and features a base with slatted rungs that gradually unwind into a trio of strips splaying outward over Circus Square. Chinneck is known for his surreal architectural interventions—these include melting facades, a condemned building that unzips, and twisting red post boxes—that upend ubiquitous designs in favor of bizarre counterparts. More

 Illustrator Phoebe Wahl and animator Andrea Love teamed up to gift us with a delightful stop-motion short full of cozy felted sweaters, wooly swirls of steam puffing from teacups, and (too much) snow just in time for the holidays. The whimsical animation is the music video for “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year,” a duet between Ingrid Michaelson and Zooey Deschanel, that tells the sweet story of Bunny, Rabbit, and their needle-felted friends as they prepare for the holidays. More

Ghanaian artist Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe has a proclivity for contrast. In his striking portraits of Black people, he gravitates toward shades of gray to render the skin tone of single figures or small groups, who sport patterned garments, hats of textured fabrics, and generally vibrant fashions that are in direct opposition to their physical features. The bright, bold color palette is the artist’s preferred method for translating emotional states, inner lives, and idiosyncrasies, one he emulates with the richly textured impasto backdrops surrounding his subjects. More

In the sleek decanters designed by artist Charlie Matz, wine and other spirits trickle through a crab’s claws, a shark’s open jaws, and the belly of a branzino. The playful aeration vessels are handmade with borosilicate glass and position marine life at the necks of the carafe, ensuring that the creatures flush with reds and pinks with every pour. Matz, who works at the Chicago-based Ignite Glass, has a few of the decanters available in the studio’s shop, and you can follow his functional creations and new releases on Instagram. More

Back in 2009, Dutch wildlife photographer Roeselien Raimond snapped a portrait of a fox that always seemed to be squinting her eyes in contemplation. That first image sparked a fascination with the creatures and their idiosyncratic expressions, an interest that’s culminated in a decades-long project and now montage documenting the fantastically diverse animals. “Foxes’ characters may differ as much as human characters,” she writes. “Shy and arrogant, from wallflower to cocky, chronically happy or notoriously sad. More

Atelier Hatena’s bread bugs are the only critters we’d gladly snuggle up with at night. The whimsical, fiber-rich characters are part of the Hiroshima-based artist’s growing troupe of felt creatures: there are four-legged rolls, tiny insects sprouting mushrooms, and pastries with eyes poking from their crusts. Atelier Hatena’s shop is currently stocked with the adorable critters, although they sell out quickly, so keep an eye on Twitter for updates. More

Ibbini Studio (previously) creates intricate paper sculptures meticulously crafted to appear as though they have been made in nature. Artist Julia Ibbini and computer scientist Stephane Noyer, who are behind the Abu Dhabi-based studio, spent the last year working on a collection of geometric cylindrical pieces swirling with vine-like forms, mirrored geometric designs that resemble the repeating patterns in honeycomb, and sculptures that look like delicate shells. The duo began collaborating in 2017 and now creates pieces by hand and machine, using a painstaking process that combines analog and digital techniques. More

 NASA marked an impressive milestone when its Parker Solar Probe was the first ever to touch the sun and return earlier this year, and footage from its historic mission offers a stunning glimpse at the massive star’s upper atmosphere. The black-and-white timelapse shows a view from the probe as it hurls through a flurry of glowing bands and sparks that dart across the frame with celestial bodies panning in the background. More

German artist Wilfried Grootens (previously) suspends vibrant, textured paintings evocative of minuscule organisms, bacteria, and other microscopic creatures within sleek sculptures made of glass. He renders lines and geometric shapes on dozens of thin panes that, when pressed together into a larger composite, produce the appearance of three-dimensional forms encased within the transparent material. The resulting works are striking illusions that morph into different, otherworldly creatures depending on the viewers’ perspective, sometimes vanishing entirely depending on the angle. More

From liquid resin and thin strips of wire, Tokyo-based designer Sakae (previously) crafts delicate hairpieces known as kanzashi. The ornamental forms are often worn for special occasions and are realistic in shape and texture, with lustrous petals and wings in translucent shades that catch surrounding light. You can see more of Sakae’s hydrangeas, irises, and daffodils on Flickr and her site, and she auctions her pieces for buyers in Japan. More

From hunks of clay, artist En Iwamura (previously) sculpts minimal forms with wildly varied facial expressions that range from shock and surprise to moody contemplation. Etched across the surface of each character are neat pathways of parallel lines, which evoke the clean, sweeping patterns in zen gardens, that are a physical manifestation of the Japanese concept of Ma. The philosophy identifies “the space between the edges, between the beginning and the end, the space and time in which we experience life. More

 We’ve all been there: spending the entire day scrolling through social, responding to texts and DMs and email, descending into internet rabbit holes, and just generally escaping the world through our devices. A quirky, 2D animation titled “Blip” by Hannah Sun weighs in on this unending screen addiction as it plunges into a visual soundscape of incessant pings, bells, and other tones. Watch the colorful commentary above, and find more of the New York City-based designer’s projects on Vimeo and Instagram. More

In his Richmond studio, artist Christopher David White (previously) practices an alchemy of materials as he transforms slabs of clay into deceptive sculptures and functional objects that appear carved from hunks of decaying wood. His trompe l’oeil ceramics are fragile depictions of the hardy material, complete with its gnarled knots and splintered edges in various states of decomposition. To achieve such a hyperrealistic finish, each piece undergoes multiple rounds of detailing—head to Instagram for a glimpse behind-the-scenes—which White starts by shaping the initial form with knots and branches and imprinting large grooves for the grain. More

A scroll through Vanessa Mckeown’s Instagram reveals a bottomless trove of absurdity and the playfully unexpected: cooked spaghetti pours from a bronze tap, a tennis ball bounces off a tennis racket made of waffles, and a trio of donuts hangs from a toilet paper holder. The London-based artist has an eye for the strange, quirky possibilities of humble everyday objects like snacks and plants, and her body of work extends back to 2015 when she photographed minimally composed interpretations on bright monochromatic backdrops. More

 In an extravagant display of evolutionary tricks and mating rituals, new footage by Adrian Smith of the wildly popular Ant Lab YouTube channel focuses on six tropical butterflies. The extremely slow-motion montage zeroes in on a trio of tropical creatures as they crack open and emerge from their chrysalises and others like the striking Blue Morpho as they take flight. Smith paired the spectacular clips with behind-the-scenes footage of the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences Living Conservatory, which fosters a climate-controlled environment that hundreds of butterflies hatch from every few weeks. More

It’s easy to mistake Irma Gruenholz’s whimsical ceramic figures for two-dimensional illustrations. The Madrid-based artist (previously) is known for her sculptures and still lifes in clay that resemble flat graphics and drawings, although her works require precise positioning and photographing before they’re printed in the pages of a magazine or children’s book. In addition to working on commissions for major publications and brands in the last few years, Gruenholz’s most recent projects include four imaginative figures tattooed with foliage and sprouting leafy branches from their heads. More

At once minimal and endlessly confounding, the elegant ceramic vessels that Matthew Chambers (previously) creates are precisely scaled iterations of the same shape. His hypnotic sculptures are comprised of individual, wheel-thrown pieces in varying sizes that are embedded within a larger form. Each abstract work is unique in color and position, sometimes displaying single monochromatic rings at incongruent angles or striped colors flush in alignment. In a note to Colossal, Chambers says his most recent pieces are an experiment in allowing the inner pattern to pop from the outer vessel. More

Suffice to say, 2021 has been an emotional rollercoaster, so it’s no surprise that the short films topping Colossal’s list span the gamut: there are uncomfortable situations of poor (and relatable) office etiquette, heartwrenching indictments of the injustices around us, and purely fun works of animation. We’ve listed the most-watched shorts here and included a few extras in case you need to escape from end-of-year work projects or family gatherings.    “Moonwalk” by Nalle Sjoblad Nalle Sjoblad’s “Moonwalk” uses brutal Home Alone-esque sequences of poor planning, office rage, and failure to appreciate even basic spatial relationships in order to remind us that the most uncomfortable, humiliating scenarios only last for a moment. More

Soaring more than 22,000 feet above the landscape, the frigid Meili mountain range sits at the edge of Yunnan’s Deqin County in the Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and borders the phenomenal “Three Parallel Rivers,” a UNESCO world heritage site where the Jinsha, Mekong, and Salween each run alongside each other but never converge. The imposing landmark, while steeped in cultural and historical significance, is majestic and sublime in its own right, features Shenzhen-based photographer Rainlook captures in a new series. More

Kent-based ceramicist Kate Malone mimics the plaited texture of a basket with her series of woven vessels. The wide-mouthed vases and small, covered boxes are wrapped in rolled strips of clay that the artist threads through small gashes in the surface of the pot. Long, vertical bars structure the braided effect, which wraps horizontally around each form. “Initially inspired by passementerie, baskets, and all things woven, for this series, I intended to imitate a woven surface on my ceramics. More