Academic research is notoriously niche and often opaque, but Dr. Ella Hawkins has found a crowd-pleasing way to share her studies. The Birmingham-based artist and design historian translates her interests in Shakespeare performance, costume, and matieral culture into edible replicas. Hawkins bakes batches of cookies that she tops with royal…
“We believe in the power of stories to tickle senses and shift perceptions,” says Marshmallow Laser Feast, an experiential artist collective merging art, extended reality (XR), and film into large-scale, immersive exhibitions. MLF’s latest work, Of the Oak, situates a monumental, six-meter-tall, double-sided video of the titular tree in London’s…
Liz’s work instantly dazzled and lit up my design brain… My eyes followed the edges bouncing from color to color. The longer you looked, the more you were rewarded. Will Miller, Senior Director of Design at Firebelly Around the same time as Firebelly’s partnership with Colossal, the Chicago design studio…
With scenic vistas for faces, blossoms for eyes, or nothing but coral above the shoulders, Rafael Silveira’s surreal portraits summon aspects of human consciousness that span the spectrum of the wonderful and the weird. The Brazilian artist describes his work as “a profound dive into the human mind,” merging flowers,…
From lengths of black cord, thread, and fine metals, Jeanne Vicerial summons the ageless, transformative power of armor and protective garments in a new series of sculptures. Drawing on her body of work titled Armors, the artist continues to create enigmatic sculptures that question the nature of presence, consciousness, and…
From delicate, single leaves, Lito conjures meticulously detailed and playful compositions. The Japanese artist began applying paper-cutting techniques to leaves in 2020 as a way to navigate his ADHD and concentrate on something constructive and uplifting. His work quickly went viral on social media, and he has been creating tiny,…
Shoelaces, zippers, chairs, and other domestic items adopt unexpected personalities in the uncanny sculptures of Tobias Izsó. Incorporating a wide range of materials, from various woods and paper to leather and textiles, the artist investigates the emotional terrain of private spaces. Izsó depicts sweaters, shoelaces, shirt cuffs, and piles of…
One of Amarie Gipson’s many gifts is an unyielding desire to ask questions. Having worked at institutions like The Contemporary Austin, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, Gipson has cultivated a practice of examining structures and pushing beyond their limitations. Her inquiries are incisive and…
It’s not too often that a high school art project morphs into a through-line in an artist’s professional practice, but for illustrator and printmaker Michael Ezzell, that’s exactly how his ongoing series The Junior Classic was born. Tearing pages from vintage books, he experiments with a range of media, compositional…
Spanning a gridded background of rectangular, pink trampolines, hundreds of gymnasts mesmerizingly flip and twist, shapeshifting as they tuck and tumble. “Trampoline Color Exercise,” a monumental digital video collage installation by Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou, takes a bird’s-eye view of athletes at peak form while abstracting their bodies and movements…