In Splinters and Shards, artist John Beadle enriches the beauty of wood’s natural grain with a series of gouged dots, line carvings, and smooth, supple curves. His small, circular sculptures and vertical towers accentuate the texture and subtle gradients of carbonized mahogany through etched patterns that reveal the pristine reddish hue peeking through the charred surface. Always highlighting the potential of the raw material, Beadle, whose background is in painting and printmaking, evokes these mediums through layering dimension and motif in a single work and drawing on the subtraction inherent in carving into a blank woodblock. More

RISD Pre-College is thrilled to announce the return of its on-campus residential summer immersive in 2022. Pre-College at Rhode Island School of Design is one of the most established and renowned summer art and design programs for high school students in the world—and also one of the oldest, celebrating its 50th anniversary since it was founded in 1971. At RISD Pre-College, rising high school juniors and seniors can live like RISD students and work alongside hundreds of other creative, highly motivated peers who will inspire them to push their limits and produce their best work. More

In his latest screenprint, artist and calligrapher Seb Lester (previously) focuses on the Transcendentals: the virtues of truth, beauty and goodness as they manifest to all living things. In the form of a butterfly, the work is filled with dozens of hidden symbols that dot the insect’s wings and abdomen, a mixture of order and chaos rendered in metallic ink. Lester shares about the piece: It has been said that artists often seek to create order from chaos. More

Richard Mosse’s “The Castle” uses the discomforting, non-human vision of the thermographic camera to explore the refugee camps that characterize today’s migrant crisis.

ATLANTA (AP) – An all-clear was given Saturday at Atlanta's airport after a gun accidentally discharged in the facility's security screening area, causing chaos, authorities said. Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport official said on Twitter that there was no active shooter at the airport. Atlanta police said no one was reported injured. ...

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — More than 200 foreign tourists arrived on Vietnam’s largest Phu Quoc island on Saturday, the first to visit the Southeast Asian country after nearly two years of border closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The fully vaccinated travelers from South Korea will spend their holidays in ...

The wildly prolific Wales-based artist Jon Foreman has spent much of 2021 on a new batch of mesmerizing land pieces. Expanding on the swirling, organic shapes he’s known for, many of his recent works take on minimal, geometric formations in diagonal stripes or colorful, concentric circles. Foreman created a 2022 calendar featuring some of the compositions shown here—ordering instructions are on his Instagram—and you can find prints of his ephemeral pieces in his shop. More

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Friday formally declared “squaw” a derogatory term and said she is taking steps to remove it from federal government use and to replace other derogatory place names. Haaland is ordering a federal panel tasked with naming geographic places to implement ...

Using data from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, filmmaker Seán Doran composed an entrancing timelpase of the sun’s glowing coronal loops during a month-long period. The video project compiles 78,846 ångström-171 photographs from August 2014 that show the bright, curved structures, which are made of hot plasma, as they burst upward. Colorized in gold in the timelapse, the arced loops often form a bridge between dark sunspots, or places where powerful magnetic fields breach the surface and flow into the massive star’s atmosphere. More

Azerbaijani artist Faig Ahmed (previously) has amassed a staggering archive of sculptural carpets that blur the boundaries of digital distortion and traditional craft techniques. Often monumental in scale, his fringed rugs are woven with classic, ornate patterns on top before they billow into a pool of glitches and skewed motifs. Ahmed weaves conceptual and historical relevances into his most recent trio, which is on view as part of his solo show PIR at New York’s Sapar Contemporary through January 6, 2022. More

Back in spring, Swiss photographer Jennifer Esseiva visited the remote forests of Vallorbe, Switzerland, as the trees and rugged, wooded terrain emerged from their winter stupor. There she captured the lush mosses and foliage that cloaked the area in a thick blanket of greenery and the recently thawed stream flowing through its midst. Now compiled in an enchanting series aptly titled Fairyland, the ethereal, long-exposure photos depict the trickling body of water as a hazy fog that clings to the landscape. More

With a flair for spectacle and clandestine activities, the perfectly coiffed characters of Shane Wheatcroft’s collages face a deluge of intrigue and drama. The Kent-based artist snips vintage ads and editorial spreads that become the musings of professionally photographed subjects: a woman replays an excruciating party scene, a businessman envisions a wholesome family gathering, and quite a few protagonists imagine scenarios they likely keep covert. Having worked with the medium for the last five years, Wheatcroft boasts a body of work that includes a broad array of collages, from bold typographic sayings to cheeky compositions that use ad slogans and outmoded headlines to poke fun at social conventions. More

Bertien van Manen’s “Archive” offers a deep-dive into the Dutch photographer’s extraordinary career, mapping out her empathetic, vernacular approach to the documentary genre through images as well as extracts from her journal.

 Ten years after Irish animator and director Johnny Kelly (previously) brought us a charming stop-motion ad for Chipotle about a farmer’s return to organic methods, he’s back with an emotional sequel that revisits the now-aging protagonist. The new short film, titled “A Future Begins,” follows the same mustached rancher as he struggles to maintain his pesticide-free fields and natural techniques amidst weather catastrophes and other struggles. More

 With the aid of multiple microscopes, filmmaker and photographer Jan van IJken (previously) unveils the otherwise imperceptible maneuvers and bodily transformations of plankton. He focuses on a diverse array of underwater organisms, which all fall under the same taxonomy because of their inability to swim against the tides and are crucial to life on Earth, providing half of all oxygen through photosynthesis. Set against black backdrops, the marine drifters appear otherworldly in shape and color, and the filmmaker documents water flea eggs visible through translucent membranes, the spiked fringe of cyanobacteria, and the minuscule movements of various creatures as they wriggle across the screen. More

Austin-based gallery Sebastian Foster just announced its Fall Print Set, the first collection of its kind in almost a decade. The new release features 19 works by well-established illustrators, printmakers, artists, and painters from across the U.S. and Europe, many of whom have worked with the gallery for years. Encompassing an eclectic array of mediums and themes, the collection showcases works from artists previously featured on Colossal, including the quirky, cartoonish characters of Sabine Timm, Diana Sudyka’s fanciful storybook scenes, and Grant Haffner’s vibrant, flat landscapes bisected by his signature utility poles. More

Using her practice as a way to reflect on and heal family trauma, Naomieh Jovin works intimately with her family album, intervening in the archive and adding new perspectives with her own photographs.

Through serene, idyllic landscapes, Tomás Sánchez visualizes his long-harbored fascination with meditation. The practice, the Cuban painter says, is “where I find many of the answers to questions that transcend from the personal to the universal. Meditation is not always a fleeting time. Meditation is not a punctual exercise; it is a constant practice.” Rather than conceptualize the exercise as a temporary state, Sánchez views mediation as a lens to interpret the world, a recurring theme that has foregrounded much of his work during the last few decades. More

As a visual metaphor for the intensity and urgency of the ongoing climate crisis, urban artist SpY erected a luminous orb that towers nearly 25 meters above Madrid’s Plaza de Colón. The large-scale work, titled “Tierra,” features a cage of construction scaffolding that encloses the massive sphere, creating a contrast between the two geometric shapes and casting a brilliant red glow on the surrounding area. Set against the backdrop of the bustling Spanish city, the installation “asks us to reflect on the way in which our home makes up a whole of which we form part and in which everything is connected as if it were a living creature,” the artist says. More

In December 2016, Harper’s Magazine published a list of more than 20 objects that had been “mistaken for guns during shootings of civilians by police in the United States since 2001.” Artist Cara Levine found herself stunned then grief-stricken by the items, prompting her to launch the multi-faceted This Is Not a Gun project, which she discusses in the latest interview supported by Colossal Members. I needed to slow down and understand what I was looking at because I don’t want to live in a world where someone can be killed eating a sandwich. More

Fewer Americans plan to drive somewhere for Thanksgiving this year than last year at the height of COVID-19 shutdowns and closures, according to price-tracking website GasBuddy.com. Only 32% of Americans plan to hit the road for turkey gorging this year compared to 35% last year, when virus caseloads were nearly ...

Outrage among European Union officials who say Belarus is deliberately trying to flood Middle Eastern migrants into Poland and Lithuania reached new heights Monday, with the EU announcing it will sanction airlines that arranged special deals to fly the migrants into Belarus in recent months. The announcement comes after European ...

 Colorful shapeshifting animations dance across the screen in an experimental music video for a newly released single by Estonian musician and composer Janek Murd. Created by the design studio Tolm, a collection of floating orbs, speckled discs, and a mishmash of flexible rings follow the melody of “AVA,” a mellow tune dominated by a trumpet and xylophone. The lively, abstract shapes are transposed to primarily correspond to the brass track, with spheres bursting into the air with a crescendo and bubbles growing in dense clusters as a run builds in intensity. More

After garnering 13,368 entries across 47 countries, the first annual Natural Landscape Photography Awards released a striking collection of rugged topographies and serene wildernesses. The inaugural contest eschews digital manipulations in favor of highlighting realistic beauty around the world, and winning entries capture a brilliant lightning strike atop Matterhorn in the Alps, the moon peaking through branches at Joshua Tree National Park, and a melting iceberg on the black sand beaches of Fellsfjara in Iceland. More

From a mix of wool fibers and yarn made from plastic waste, Scottish artist Jo Hamilton crochets large-scale portraits and architectural landscapes delineated with dangling threads. Her knotted pieces push the boundaries of art and craft traditions, bringing the two together in subversive portrayals of powerful women and metropolises marred by production. Unraveling at the edges, the textured works reflect on interlocking issues like unchecked capitalism, social disparities, and the increasingly urgent climate crisis. More