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    Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry

    Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints. Photos by Robin Zahler. All images courtesy of the artists and the National Festival of Making, shared with permission

    Blackburn’s National Festival of Making Celebrates Collaborations Between Art and Industry

    July 9, 2025

    ArtCraftDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    Every year, in the town of Blackburn, Lancashire, a vibrant festival erupts with creativity in a celebration of art, craft, and industry. This year marked the seventh edition of the National Festival of Making, organized along the theme of “Art in Manufacturing.” Acclaimed artists and designers teamed up with industry leaders to create works using a variety of materials, from Morag Myerscough’s collaboration with Crown Paints for a vibrant new mural to Liaqat Rasul’s partnership with textile producer Herbert Parkinson for an optical installation.

    Locality played a central role in the festival, as artists were paired with manufacturers in Lancashire. Matter at hand, the design practice of Lewis Jones, teamed up with Darwen Terracotta and Faience, which focuses on traditional glazed earthenware for home products and restoration (faience is a type of tin-glazed pottery).

    Liaqat Rasul in collaboration with Herbert Parkinson, “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope”

    Matter at hand created a large-scale installation titled “Poured Earth,” which takes an architectural approach to materials in the northern transept of Blackburn Cathedral. The piece invites visitors to walk through an archway of wooden crates and around cast elements in various shapes and sizes, emphasizing the timelessness and continuity of earthen building materials and styles.

    Morag Myerscough transformed a corner building into a characteristically vivid, geometric floral mural with complementary garden boxes and a water tank. Rasul’s piece, a multifaceted textile assemblage suspended in the Blackburn Cathedral crypt, features a friendly face made of independent elements that merge into a full visage when viewed from the front.

    Titled “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope,” the piece was created from scraps salvaged from Herbert Parkinson’s factory floor in addition to the artist’s own archive. Rasul tenderly embroidered the Urdu, Hindu, and Welsh words for “hope” amid various found elements like cord and safety pins.

    The National Festival of Making features a program of more than 100 workshops, performances, artist talks, markets, and more across more than 20 Blackburn venues. Emphasizing the power of collaboration, cross-disciplinary exploration, and community, the festival aims to empower people of all ages to lean into curiosity and get making.

    Rasul and Lewis’s work will be on view through July 12, with Myerscough’s mural intended for long-term display. Find more on the festival’s website.

    Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth”

    Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)

    Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints

    Liaqat Rasul in collaboration with Herbert Parkinson, “Umeed (Oh-meed) امید – Gobaith – Hope” (detail)

    Matter at hand in collaboration with Darwen Terracotta, “Poured Earth” (detail)

    Detail of a mural by Morag Myerscough in collaboration with Crown Paints

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    Raqib Shaw’s 100-Foot-Wide Autobiographical Painting Traces a Journey of Exile and Self-Discovery

    Detail of “Paradise Lost” (2009–25). All images courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago, shared with permission

    Raqib Shaw’s 100-Foot-Wide Autobiographical Painting Traces a Journey of Exile and Self-Discovery

    July 8, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    In 1999, Raqib Shaw began pulling at the threads of what would become an autobiographical painting of loss and beauty. He had recently fled his native Kashmir for New Delhi and later London, where he enrolled at Central Saint Martins. Political upheaval sparked his departure and sent him into permanent exile, a destabilizing event that left him longing for home and required a courageous act of self-reinvention.

    As epic as the 17th-century poem that shares its name, “Paradise Lost” is the culmination of these experiences. Composed of 21 panels that stretch 100 feet wide, the monumental work traces four chapters of the artist’s life, from childhood to 2015. Although Shaw first began thinking about the painting in 1999, he didn’t begin working on it in earnest until 2009. Today, the allegorical piece is on view for the first time in its entirety at the Art Institute of Chicago.

    “Paradise Lost” (2009–25)

    In an essay about the work, Shaw describes metaphor as central to the painting’s narrative. “In Kashmir, metaphor is intrinsic to the way people speak and think,” he says. “Metaphor, rather than directness, conveys meaning with the greatest precision and depth.”

    The painting begins on the left, with a seated figure howling at the moon. Set in the Karakoram mountain ranges of Shaw’s youth, the scene reflects the innocence, solitude, and inner calm the artist associates with his childhood. Moving right reveals a bird being freed from its cage, a figure tied up while surrounded by ferocious snakes, and finally, a small hut devoid of all luxuries. This robe-clad subject is a self-portrait of the artist with his beloved dog, although he points out that he considers the painting to be more universal, writing:

    It is a story of the many paradises we inevitably lose as we move through life: the paradise of childhood, of innocence, of excitement and anticipation, of novelty. We lose the ease of belonging and the calm of that mental stillness that comes from lack of anxiety. And while these losses are deeply personal, they are surely universally felt. We all carry such losses as we move through life and construct inner worlds in response.

    To create such dazzling scenes with immense precision, Shaw utilizes syringes and porcupine quills to apply enamel paints typically used by the auto industry. Acrylic liner on gesso creates “a golden line almost like the leading of a stained glass window,” and inlaid stones and other small materials add glittering depth.

    While “Paradise Lost” deals with heavy themes of displacement and grief, Shaw shares that beauty is at its center. “Not beauty as ornament but as necessity. I believe deeply that art has the power to transform sorrow into meaning, and it has this wonderful quality to alchemize personal pain into something luminous and enduring,” he writes.

    “Paradise Lost” is on view through January 19, 2026. Find more from Shaw on his website and Instagram.

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    Magical Realism Permeates Christian Ruiz Berman’s Labyrinthine Paintings

    “Tesseract” acrylic on panel, 11 x17 inches. All images courtesy of Christian Ruiz Berman, shared with permission

    Magical Realism Permeates Christian Ruiz Berman’s Labyrinthine Paintings

    July 7, 2025

    Art

    Grace Ebert

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    “I grew up in the magical realist tradition, not only in terms of literature and painting but as a school of thought and culture,” Christian Ruiz Berman says. Endlessly interested in “the surreal nature of being stuck between two worlds,” the Mexican artist channels his experiences of immigration and adapting to new environments—including his current home in upstate New York—through his painting practice.

    For Ruiz Berman, magical realism is a way to translate his realities into dense, surreal compositions that become a constellation of references and memories. His influences are broad, from Mexican muralist traditions and Latin American folk art to Taoism and Buddhism to poetry and Japanese printmaking, all of which converge in his work.

    “God giving god to god” (2023), acrylic on panel, 30 x 40 inches

    The resulting paintings become a place to encounter unexpected pairings and mystical associations free of hierarchies. Layering, in Ruiz Berman’s work, isn’t to privilege the objects and textures of the foreground but a manner of depicting the relationships between all elements.

    “Ultimately, my work very much reflects the collision of Eastern and Latin American culture, art, (and) thought, as much as it does my personal amalgamation of Mexico and the U.S.,” he tells Colossal. “The existence of high intentionality and care, but also playfulness and strangeness, is something that has always made me feel connected to East Asian culture, and particularly to places like Japan and Tibet.”

    Although Ruiz Berman offers many entry points to a single painting, his compositions provide an exacting path, however labyrinthine it might be. The eager raccoons in “God giving god to god” might catch the viewer’s eye first, for example, but they soon lead to the sleek lilies they offer up and the Mesoamerican stone statue that’s the object of their reverence. Another seated figure hovers to their left, against woodgrain, granite, and vibrant, swirling agate.

    “Mixcoatl Merkaba” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches

    Combined with clean lines and exacting geometric shapes, this melange of symbols is undeniably eclectic and in service of a larger narrative. He shares:

    I examine the notion that each person, animal, and object is not only an essential component of the present moment but an entangled element in a greater apparatus of constant change and adaptation…Magic and surprise always happen as a result of shared experience, cross-cultural inspiration, and the subversion of established tropes and identities. I paint because I am fascinated by the way it can draw from the endless diversity and inherent tension of life’s web.

    Animals are often incorporated as “stewards of human culture,” the artist says. For example, Mesoamerican mythology tends to position jaguars as revered protectors able to move between worlds: those of the trees and water, day and night, and sites of the living and dead. Birds, too, are often seen as messengers and guides. Depicting these creatures not in their natural habitats but embedded in unusual compositions, Ruiz Berman seeks to recontextualize their meanings and expand the narratives each has come to symbolize.

    If you’re in Miami, you can see some of Ruiz Berman’s work this summer at Mindy Solomon Gallery. Next spring, he will show at Art Basel Hong Kong with Proyectos Monclov and Harper’s Gallery in New York. Until then, head to his website and Instagram for more.

    “Ursa Gevurah” (2025), acrylic on panel, 50 x 60 inches

    “Grackles of grace” (2023), acrylic on panel, 18 x 24 inches

    “Xacozelotl oz lat” (2025), acrylic on panel, 16 x 20 inches

    “Life cycle” (2024), acrylic on panel, 24 x 36 inches

    “Honeycreeper Harbingers” (2024), acrylic on panels, 15 x 11 inches

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    Site-Specific Textiles by Rachel B. Hayes Radiate Within Vast Landscapes and Sunlit Interiors

    Mirror Lake, Bottomless Lakes State Park, New Mexico, 2015. All images courtesy of Rachel B. Hayes, shared with permission

    Site-Specific Textiles by Rachel B. Hayes Radiate Within Vast Landscapes and Sunlit Interiors

    July 7, 2025

    ArtCraftDesign

    Kate Mothes

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    From myriad swaths of vivid, translucent fabric, Rachel B. Hayes conjures striking installations that transform our experiences of both interior spaces and expansive natural landscapes. The Tulsa-based artist suspends large-scale patchwork compositions in spaces ranging from barns and greenhouses to open fields and lakes, experimenting with scale, color, pattern, light, and movement in joyful installations.

    Hayes’ works have been exhibited extensively around the U.S. and Europe, often stretched like quilted sun sails over courtyards. Her recent piece “Horizon Drift,” in collaboration with Black Cube in Denver, comprises a series of overlapping triangular elements that cast colorful shadows onto the pavement, similar to “A Moment in Time” in Capri.

    “Horizon Drift” (2024) Denver, Colorado. Photo by Third Dune, courtesy of Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum

    Usually installed for just a few weeks or months, Hayes’ installations temporarily merge with their surroundings, a nod to Jeanne-Claude and Christo’s monumentally ambitious fabric interventions. Richly patchworked or woven, the pieces also emphasize a joyful experience of light, breeze, and time-honored American quilting practices.

    Hayes always enjoys looking back at earlier works and in situ experiments to inform new pieces. “I still get so much inspiration and energy from my temporary experiments…I keep coming back to my favorite sites that I know like the back of my hand but also learn and see new things every time I visit,” she says. She often returns to various sites in South Dakota, Missouri, and New Mexico to document work multiple times. The light, weather, and changes in the landscape always “read” differently, and she thinks of many of these pieces as part of a “long vision” within her practice.

    Sometimes, Hayes’ works remain installed for a while longer, and she has embraced becoming something of a “fabric engineer.” Several long-term projects will likely be installed outdoors for at least five years, challenging the artist to select materials that will be both visually effective and endure the elements. “It is truly exhilarating to try and find ways to make my outdoor experiments last for longer periods of time,” she says.

    Light, especially sunlight, plays a significant role in Hayes’ compositions and site selection, particularly indoors where architecture and prescribed routes influence how people move around and can view the work. “I am usually chasing the sun to see where it peeks through the space and plays with reflections and color-casted shadows, so it’s really important that I make the appropriate choice for the site,” she says. While the artist uses software like Photoshop or Procreate to compose the overall pattern, she primarily focuses on the physicality of the material and its unique interactions with different places.

    Installation at Foreland, Catskill, New York. Photo by Adam T. Deen

    Hayes’ installations are on view in Patterned by Nature at the Chicago Botanic Garden throughout the summer. You can also see her work in Soft Structures through August 8 at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York City and Body’s First Architecture through August 10 at Ely Center of Contemporary Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

    Her semi-permanent exhibitions can be seen at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and The Gathering Place in Tulsa. And if you find yourself in West Texas, Hayes’ flag is currently flown outside Ballroom Marfa during the gallery’s opening hours. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

    You might also enjoy Wally Dion’s translucent quilts that honor Indigenous traditions.

    Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, Massachusetts, 2023

    “Garden Loom” (2015), Roswell, New Mexico

    Menlo Park, California

    “A Moment in Time” (2022), Capri, Italy. Photo by Istanbul’74

    Detail of installation at Mirror Lake, Bottomless Lakes State Park, New Mexico, 2015

    “Cloud Report” (2021), South Dakota

    South Dakota

    Fairfield, Iowa

    Flint Hills, Kansas

    Greenwood, Missouri

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    From Velvet and Vintage Textiles, Larysa Bernhardt Embroiders Otherworldly Moths

    All images courtesy of Larysa Bernhardt, shared with permission

    From Velvet and Vintage Textiles, Larysa Bernhardt Embroiders Otherworldly Moths

    July 7, 2025

    ArtCraftNature

    Kate Mothes

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    “Mythology and folklore surrounding moths and butterflies carries complex and sometimes contradictory symbolism,” artist Larysa Bernhardt says. “I was always attracted to their paradoxical nature.” While on one hand, she dreads certain types of the winged creatures turning up in her house because of the risk they pose to textiles, she is fascinated by their variations and loves to see them thrive.

    Dualities abound in Bernhardt’s sculptural, embroidered textile moths. Her creative process begins outdoors in a seemingly unrelated aspect of the studio—her garden. The artist tends to a “moon garden” every summer, comprising fragrant botanicals like tobacco, moonflower, datura, and jasmine that perfume the air and blossom with small white flowers that “glow in the dark like stars,” the artist says. Sphinx and luna moths often visit, accompanied by thousands of fireflies.

    When the sun comes up, the garden transforms into a riot of color, with zinnias, poppies, and roses attracting daytime pollinators like butterflies and bees. “It’s the duality of it—night and day, sun and moon, moths and butterflies” that fascinates Bernhardt. She adds, “It’s an incredibly complex balancing act I am forever mesmerized by.”

    Mirroring the supple fuzziness of the insects’ wings, the artist enjoys working with velvet to achieve the moths’ elegance and whimsy. It’s a challenging material because the pile can be unforgiving; make a mistake and the ghost of the stitch will remain as a mark on the fabric. Bernhardt stitches freehand when applying motifs to the wings, starting with a loose sketch but allowing intuition to guide her in creating star-like patterns and symbolic objects like vases or eyes.

    Bernhardt also loves working with vintage needlepoints and old tapestries. “I find textile pieces in dusty corners of antique stores; I love these discoveries,” she says. “And I love giving them another chance to go back up on a wall and be admired again, cherished.”

    The artist’s work is currently included in Daughters of Eve at Quirky Fox in Taranaki, New Zealand, and Beyond the Sea at Nanny Goat Gallery in Petaluma, California. In August, Bernhardt will be part of a show with Beinart Gallery in Melbourne, and she’s currently working toward a solo exhibition at Haven Gallery in Long Island, New York. Find more on her website and Instagram.

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    Vibrant Patterns in Frances Priest’s Ceramics Emanate Historical and International Influences

    “Byzantine.” Photos by Shannon Toft. All images courtesy of Frances Priest, shared with permission

    Vibrant Patterns in Frances Priest’s Ceramics Emanate Historical and International Influences

    July 3, 2025

    ArtCraft

    Kate Mothes

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    In vibrant effusions of color, Frances Priest creates ceramic vessels, tiles, and sculptural forms that explore the possibilities of pattern. The Edinburgh-based artist’s interest in decorative motifs stems from a book she received as a child, The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, originally published in 1856.

    Jones compiled elaborate documentation of decorative motifs around Europe, the Middle East, and other regions represented in British museum collections of the time. An international focus has long inspired Priest, who incorporates a wide range of visual languages into her pieces.

    Jar with a chevron pattern

    Priest (previously) emphasizes geometry and color, merging ideas of precision with organic movement—some of the elements appear to be floating away or overlapping playfully with others rather than remaining in perfect alignment. She also continues the patterns across the bottoms of the pieces, emphasizing an all-around completeness.

    Recent works include a series of cylindrical vessels with lids influenced by Chinese ginger jars. The artist recently completed a large-scale tile commission for Theatre Clwyd in North Wales titled “Stellar,” and a series of encaustic floral tiles dotted the floor of a garden at London’s 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

    If you’re in Edinburgh, see Priest’s work at &Gallery in the forthcoming group exhibition Fragments, which runs from July 5 to 30. Find more on the artist’s Instagram and website, where some of the pieces shown here are available for purchase in her shop.

    Jars with (L-R) triangle, chevron, and bow patterns

    Detail of the triangle-patterned jar

    “Wait”

    Installation view of “Byzantine”

    Detail of “Byzantine”

    “Pace”

    Jar with a bow pattern

    Detail of “Byzantine”

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    Explore Centuries of Art History 15 Minutes at a Time in James Payne’s ‘Great Art Explained’

    All images courtesy of Great Art Explained

    Explore Centuries of Art History 15 Minutes at a Time in James Payne’s ‘Great Art Explained’

    July 2, 2025

    ArtHistory

    Kate Mothes

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    The art world is rife with persistent myths and associations, some of which are based on socio-economic factors that have prevailed for, well, millennia. For instance, wealthy patrons have historically been among the few who benefit in a system that can be exclusive and elitist. Whether we’re talking rich ancient Romans, the Medici family in Renaissance Florence, myriad kings and queens, or today’s major art collectors, the bottom line is most often money. For many, that’s a solid barrier to entry.

    Another term that gets tossed around a lot is “gatekeeping.” Galleries, art dealers, museum curators, scholars, publishers, and so on assume roles as tastemakers and assessors, building relationships (or not) that often determine which artworks end up in public institutions, which shows receive attention, or which private collections artists’ pieces are destined to join. Gatekeeping is, by definition, the act of monitoring who “gets in,” reinforcing the notion of exclusivity. In short, it describes a multitude of potential barriers.

    So, if the art world has historically always indulged the wealthy or felt like a realm for scholars and intellectuals, how can it be made more accessible? That’s what curator, gallerist, educator, and self-described passionate art lover James Payne is up to with Great Art Explained.

    The video series began in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic, with the simple premise that great art can be “explained clearly and concisely in 15 minutes,” he says. Payne’s YouTube channel chronicles seminal artworks throughout the centuries, predominantly focusing on textbook titans of European and American art like Marcel Duchamp, Sandro Botticelli, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Johannes Vermeer, Salvador Dalí, and more.

    Distilling the stories of iconic pieces into 15-minute explanations, Payne dives into some of the most groundbreaking moments in art history. The most recent video highlights a turning point in American art through the lens of Jackson Pollock’s splatter paintings, including “Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist),” which the artist painted on the floor of a Long Island barn in 1950.

    Pollock’s methods, lifestyle, and views have long been polarizing, but he is most known for eschewing traditional brushwork—changing the course of art history, really—by pouring, dripping, and flinging paint onto canvas. Not only that, he removed the substrate from the wall and put it on the floor, challenging notions of formality and preciousness. There’s even a discarded cigarette and a few rogue insects permanently stuck to the surface.

    Lee Krasner, “Combat” (1965), oil on canvas, 179 x 410.4 centimeters

    “Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist)” and similar works made around that time amounted to an artistic breakthrough for Pollock, who has come to exemplify the myth of the lone, troubled, so-called “cowboy painter.” (He was born in Cody, Wyoming, and was known to drink to excess; he died in 1956 in an alcohol-related car crash.) This period of his practice also spurred the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York City and marked a monumental shift in our appreciation of what painting can be.

    Payne is interested in these kinds of trailblazing moments, but he emphasizes letting go of “art-speak” to bring us closer to significant works of art through a mini-documentary format. He releases a new video each month, plus an occasional sub-series called Great Art Cities that highlights a variety of destinations in collaboration with travel writer Joanne Shurvell.

    “Sometimes the artwork is a springboard for other wider issues I would like to explore, and sometimes, it is a simple exploration of techniques and meaning,” Payne says. “For me, setting the works in context helps us appreciate them more.”

    Payne’s work is supported via Patreon, and a Great Art Explained book is slated for release from Thames & Hudson later this year. And for the literary fans among us, he also runs another YouTube channel in a similar vein called Great Books Explained. (via Kottke)

    Detail of Gustav Klimt, “The Kiss” (1908-09), oil and gold leaf on canvas, 180 x 180 centimeters

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    Ethereal Sculptures by Karen LaMonte Link Perceptions of Beauty, Femininity, and Nature

    “Reclining Etude” (2017), cast glass, 23.5 x 59.5 x 28.5 centimeters. Photos by Martin Polak. All images courtesy of Karen LaMonte and Pratt Munson, shared with permission

    Ethereal Sculptures by Karen LaMonte Link Perceptions of Beauty, Femininity, and Nature

    July 1, 2025

    Art

    Kate Mothes

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    In porcelain, bronze, glass, and stone, Karen LaMonte’s sculptures explore ideas around femininity and conventions of beauty throughout history. She nods to time-honored sculptural traditions with silhouettes redolent of, for example, the three marble goddesses of the Parthenon pediment that have shaped classical sculpture and exemplified ideals of beauty for millennia.

    LaMonte conceives of lounging or posing figures in her Nocturnes and Etudes series with gowns or robes that appear spectrally inhabited. “Like spoken or written language, beauty is shaped by common idioms and shared experiences that are the foundations of culture,” LaMonte says. “In this way, it is more than just a description; it is a reflection of a greater whole, a visual representation of what is valued in society.”

    “Etude 13” (2017), cast glass, 65.5 x 48.5 x 19 centimeters

    Munson Museum of Art just opened a survey of nearly 60 pieces titled Celestial Bodies: Sculpture by Karen LaMonte, exploring the artist’s use of various media. The artist juxtaposes a range of resilient, heavy-duty materials with exaggeratedly draped fabrics associated with softness and vulnerability, interrogating the intrinsic dualities between strength and fragility, visibility and absence, and solidity and transparency.

    Celestial Bodies also includes a multimedia series of scientifically accurate depictions of cumulus clouds that billow ethereally from their bases. “Clouds intrigue me because they make visible the invisible forces of the natural world,” LaMonte says.

    The more the artist explored the ripples and folds of fabric and drapery in her dress sculptures, the more she began to interpret the body as a landscape shaped and defined by the elements. LaMonte began to explore the notion of weather, and her series Weathering emerged, imbuing cloud forms with an elegant bodily quality.

    Celestial Bodies continues through December 31 in Utica, New York. Find more on LaMonte’s website and Instagram.

    Group of “Cumulus (1:8)” (2020–2023), various mediums and sizes

    “Vortex” 2009, vitreous china, 91 x 330 x 10 centimeters

    “Hanako” (2012), bronze, 122.5 x 50 x 44 centimeters

    “Reclining Lucent 3” (2022), cast glass, 51.5 x 153 x 65.5 centimeters

    “Cumulus (1:8)”

    Group of “Cumulus (1:8)”

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