Art

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares36 Views

    The Colossal Shop’s 2025 Gift Guide: Gift Like an Artist

    by

    The Colossal Shop’s 2025 Gift Guide: Gift Like an Artist

    November 6, 2025

    ArtBooksColossalCraft

    Jackie Andres

    Share

    Pin

    Email

    Bookmark

    The end of the year is quickly approaching and so is the season of giving. By choosing to shop with us this year, you’re supporting independent publishing and allowing us continue to share important stories every day.

    This year’s Colossal Gift Guide highlights some of our favorite art and design products. From world-renowned artist tools and one-of-a-kind calendars to quirky bags and detailed monographs, we’ve curated everything you need to be named Best Gift Giver of the Year.

    Grouped by each unique recipient—whether it be your creative sibling, grandkids, or that one uncle whose vibe is impossible to identify—there’s something here for everyone on your list.

    Grab a cup of tea, get cozy, and happy shopping! Thank you for supporting Colossal.✨

    For the Studio Rat

    We all know and love a studio rat who never clocks out—yes, we’re talking about that special someone with a paint-stained wardrobe and a desk that’s more clay than surface. From pencils and pastels to supply sacks and art theory, this collection is dedicated to artists, design nerds, and critical visual thinkers alike.

    For the Game Night Host

    It’s time to gather the crew! Show your friend group’s designated game night host some appreciation with an elegant deck of cards, an artful puzzle, and more. (If you’re into introverted brain-teaser time, that works too!)

    For the Young Artist

    It’s never too early to encourage young ones to get creative. From specially-crafted wooden toys to unique crayons and imaginative books, finding an encouraging gift for that mini maker in your life has never been easier.

    For the Art Book Buff

    Beautifully bound, striking, and compelling in thought, our collection of books is curated for creative minds. Including monographs, design and architecture surveys, visual and social theory, and even children’s books, there’s something here for everyone.

    For the Tastemaker

    Matchboxes, prints, and coffee table books galore! Explore our selection of creature comforts for the homebodies who treat their space like a carefully curated gallery.

    For the Crafter

    Know a DIY devotee who can’t resist a good embroidery kit or crochet project? Show them how much you support their lovely handmade creations with a new craft, a handy bag for their supplies, and more.

    Don’t forget: Colossal Members always receive 15% off in the shop, and from now until the holiday season is over, get free shipping on all U.S. orders over $150.

    Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

    Hide advertising

    Save your favorite articles

    Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

    Receive members-only newsletter

    Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

    Join us today!

    $7/month

    $75/year

    Explore membership options

    Next article More

    More stories

    • 150 Shares47 Views

      in Art

      A Retrospective of Trailblazing Artist Faith Ringgold Centers Narratives of Black Americans

      by

      “Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #2: Come On Dance With Me” (2004), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 81 x 64 inches. Photos by Dan Bradica Studio. All images © Faith Ringgold, courtesy of the Anyone Can Fly Foundation and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, shared with permission

      A Retrospective of Trailblazing Artist Faith Ringgold Centers Narratives of Black Americans

      November 6, 2025

      ArtSocial Issues

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Across a wide range of media, from painting to textiles to works on paper, Faith Ringgold (1930-2024) developed a practice that merged history, activism, formal inquiry, and global influences. Born and raised in Harlem, New York, her work evolved from her awareness of politics and social issues in the 1960s and 1970s, which she channeled into “an incisive narrative about the historical sacrifices and achievements of Black Americans,” says Jack Shainman Gallery.

      Opening this month at the gallery, a retrospective spans Ringgold’s explorations of textiles, sculpture, and works on canvas. She is renowned for her story quilts, which combine fabric and embroidery with painted tableaux of Harlem, jazz clubs, portraits—especially of women—and historical references to slavery and the oppression of Black people in America.

      “American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the
      Advent of Black Power” (1967), oil on canvas, 72 x 96 inches

      Earlier this year, a documentary called “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” was released that chronicles the artist’s first public art piece, a feminist mural at the Women’s House of Detention on Rikers Island. The mural, “For the Women’s House” contains eight segments—patchwork-like—that contain images of women in predominantly male career roles. Works like “American People Series #19: US Postage Commemorating the Advent of Black Power” and “Black Light #11: US America Black” mirror this motif, redolent of a quilt, which presages her later work.

      At Jack Shainman Gallery, Faith Ringgold highlights the artist’s extraordinary and innovative approach to figuration, perspective, and material. She was acutely aware of the art historical canon as a predominantly white space, so she “sought out forms more suitable to the exploration of gender and racial identity that she so urgently pursued,” the gallery says. In the 1970s, she traveled to Europe and onward to Africa, gathering ideas.

      When she first began working with textiles, Ringgold made what she called “tankas,” which were inspired by sacred Tibetan thangkas—textile images intended for meditation—that she saw on view at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Ringgold’s iterations incorporated sewn fabric borders around paintings made on unstretched canvas.

      “Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #8: Don’t Wanna Love You Like I Do” (2007), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 82 x 67 inches

      Eventually, these works became more abstract, then morphed into soft sculptures and performance pieces inspired by African masking traditions. As her work evolved into the 1980s, the story quilt emerged as a way to render imagery on a larger scale and connect with time-honored textile craft traditions often associated with women. Jack Shainman says:

      The significance of Faith Ringgold’s life continues to be felt and understood in new, urgent and relevant ways…Just as she fought tirelessly against the prevailing sentiments of racial and gendered exclusion of both her time and our own, so too did her inimitable work in textiles provide an example of how life and art—so often presumed to be separate—are in fact deeply and fundamentally intertwined.

      Faith Ringgold opens on November 14 and continues through January 24 in New York City. Explore more of the artist’s work on her estate’s website and Instagram.

      “Love Letter: No Kiss” (1987), intaglio on canvas, pieced canvas, and beads, 65 x 52 inches

      “Feminist Series #4: I Have to Answer For…” (1972), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 47 x 34 1/2 inches

      “Black Light #11: US America Black” (1969), oil on canvas, 60 x 84 inches

      “Slave Rape #4 of 16, Run” (1973, 1993), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 52 1/2 x 34 1/2 inches

      “Jazz Stories: Mama Can Sing, Papa Can Blow #5: You Put the Devil in Me” (2004), acrylic on canvas with pieced fabric border, 81 1/2 x 67 1/2 inches

      “Slave Rape #1 of 16, Run” (1973, 1993), acrylic on canvas with cloth quilted border, 49 x 34 inches

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 113 Shares28 Views

      in Art

      In Surreal Ceramics, Megan Bogonovich Imagines a Fantastical Garden

      by

      “2025-27” (2025), glazed ceramic, 10 x 16 x 7 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery, shared with permission

      In Surreal Ceramics, Megan Bogonovich Imagines a Fantastical Garden

      November 6, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Simultaneously recalling elements of fungi, coral, and botanicals, Megan Bogonovich’s vibrant sculptures poke at the boundary between nature and the artificial, the unique and the manufactured. The artist’s uncanny botanical ceramics are created using a series of bespoke plaster molds, embellished with intricate details that resemble blossoms or mushroom caps. Duplicated shapes are disguised with a range of glazes, textures, and embellishments that resist pure repetition yet hint at a sense of the inorganic.

      A collection of new sculptures by Bogonovich go on view this week in the artist’s solo exhibition presented by JLG Projects at Jane Lombard Gallery in New York City. Fertile Ground opens on November 7 and continues through December 13. Explore more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “2025-28” (2025), glazed ceramic, 18 x 16 x 12 inches

      “2024-37A-H (Eight interconnected sculptures)” (2024), glazed ceramic, 16 1/2 x 48 x 20 inches

      “2025-20” (2025), glazed ceramic, 12 1/2 x 10 x 8 inches

      “2024-28” (2024), glazed ceramic, 12 x 9 x 7 inches

      “2025-3” (2025), glazed ceramic, 14 1/2 x 7 x 3 inches

      “2025-30” (2025), glazed ceramic, 17 1/2 x 12 x 9 inches

      “2025-41” (2025), glazed ceramic, 9 x 11 x 8 inches

      “2024-16” (2024), glazed ceramic, 15 x 9 x 9 inches

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 150 Shares40 Views

      in Art

      Ninon Hivert Captures the Poetics of Discarded Items in Sculpture and Collage

      by

      Photos by Gregory Copitet. All images courtesy of the artist and Chapelle XIV, shared with permission

      Ninon Hivert Captures the Poetics of Discarded Items in Sculpture and Collage

      November 5, 2025

      Art

      Georgia E. Norton de Matos

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      In Ninon Hivert’s multimedia work, an object’s afterlife is an unfolding story—discarded items retaining the memory of a body, its gestures, and its relationship to its environment. She works like an archaeologist, observing with patient attention before translating a found object anew, capturing the textures of contemporary urban life in the process.

      Hivert’s study of the forgotten object began by documenting in photographs, then later in clay sculpture, the uncertain gestures of cast-off clothing. In recent work, she has expanded focus to a more general cast of quotidian items. Isolating artifacts at moments of abandon, she clarifies the contour of a presence left behind.

      If the present is built on a ceaseless changing from future into past, Hivert’s work captures the strength of this elusive state. Like grain into spirit, her work is a process of distillation. The qualities of an object change slightly each time they are recaptured in a new medium, ultimately extracting something eternal from an unsuspecting in-between moment.

      Hivert’s latest exhibition, Ce Qui Est, Ce Qui Sera, Ce Qui Fut. (“That Which Is, That Which Will Be, That Which Has Been.”) at Chapelle XIV in Paris, brings the ongoing themes of her oeuvre to new materials and motifs.

      Stacks of flattened cardboard and bags of clothing are compressed into ceramic cubes, their bulging surfaces recording the tension of containment. Glass bubble-wrap sculptures from Hivert’s Demi-Jour series line shelves—fragile objects posing as protective shells for absent contents. A bronze cast of work gloves rests nearby, monumentalizing gestures of past labor. In the background, torn collages evoke the weathered palimpsests of wheatpaste advertisements caught between removal and renewal.

      Working in bronze and pâte de verre—a glass molding technique made from fused glass powder—alongside clay, photography, and collage, Hivert treats the dialogue between material and environment with precision. These recent projects are as conceptually rigorous as they are visually striking. Hivert explains:

      With glass, after modeling the bubble wrap in clay, a molding process was added, introducing new gestures, new steps, and successive states of matter into this translation. The final result of Demi-Jour was, for me, a kind of serendipity: I ended up with a solid but translucent sculpture, where the dark mass inside disappeared when light passed through it, as if I had captured a shadow.

      Hivert’s observations evoke both tenderness and critique. While her work embraces the poetics of transition, it also implicates the viewer in cycles of consumption. What happens when an object slips from use into waste? When does a functional item cease to be visible, and what remains in that unseen interval?

      Articulating this fragile “in-between,” Hivert illustrates the transitional state’s autonomy. The result is a body of work that neither mourns nor admires what has been discarded. Hivert allows materials to persist in ambiguity, occupying time differently. In their quiet stubbornness, these forms evoke both what has been and what will be: temporalities bound together by the ever-renewing gestures of the present.

      Ce Qui Est, Ce Qui Sera, Ce Qui Fut. runs from October 10 to December 20 at Chapelle XIV in Paris. Find more from Hivert on her website or on Instagram.

      Georgia E. Norton de Matos is a guest contributor for Colossal, reporting from Paris.

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Next article More

    • 163 Shares36 Views

      in Art

      From Aluminum and Acrylic, Mariko Mori Conjures the Metaphysical and Otherworldly in ‘Radiance’

      by

      “Unity IX” (2024), UV-cured pigment, Dibond, and aluminum, 63 1/2 inches diameter, edition of 5 with 2 AP. All images courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly, shared with permission

      From Aluminum and Acrylic, Mariko Mori Conjures the Metaphysical and Otherworldly in ‘Radiance’

      November 5, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Where technology, time, the cosmos, and perception meet, you’ll find the work of Japanese artist Mariko Mori. The artist has long been interested in the relationship between the individual and the universe—existence itself—which she explores through a range of mediums and immersive experiences. She also draws from the Buddhist philosophy of interconnectedness, which centers around the idea that no living being, object, or event exists in isolation. Everything is linked.

      A recent series of dreamy tondos and luminescent acrylic sculptures make up the artist’s current solo exhibition, Radiance, at Sean Kelly. Comprising abstract, symmetrical, metaphysical forms in bright pastel hues, Mori’s circular Unity compositions emphasize beauty, interdependence, and transcendence.

      “Love II” (2025), Dichroic-coated layered acrylic in two parts with Corian base, 70 7/8 x 29 11/16 x 23 3/8 inches, edition of 1 with 1 AP

      This body of work delves into Japan’s ancient cultures, especially prehistoric and early historic eras. Mori extensively researched a number of ancient periods during which artistic, philosophical, and social advances took place, like the Jomon era (14,000 to 300 B.C.E.) and Yayoi period (300 B.C.E. to 300 C.E.). She also delved into relatively more recent eras, like the Kofun (250 to 538 C.E.) and Asuka (538 to 710 C.E.) periods.

      “Informed by site visits to sacred geological formations across the Japanese archipelago, including the storied rocks of Okinoshima Island and the shrines of Izumo and Awaji, Mori focuses on these ancestral sites through a contemporary lens,” the gallery says. On Okinoshima, Mori observed sacred rocks known as iwakura, which are believed to contain kami—deities or spirits.

      Mori’s Stone series, like “Love II,” re-envision iwakura within the context of the gallery. Made of solid, translucent acrylic that reflects and diffracts light in an almost prismatic effect, visitors are invited into a contemplative experience. “Their dichroic surfaces shift with ambient light and the viewer’s movement, reimagining invisible energies that recall the stones’ original function as portals to the sacred,” says a statement.

      Radiance continues through December 20 in New York. Find more on Mori’s website and Instagram.

      “Unity II” (2024), UV-cured pigment, Dibond, and aluminum, 63 1/2 inches diameter, edition of 5 with 2 AP

      “Kamitate Stone I” (2025), Dichroic-coated layered acrylic and Corian base, 70 7/8 x 28 7/8 x 24 5/8 inches, edition of 1 with 1 AP

      “Unity VII” (2024), UV-cured pigment, Dibond, and aluminum, 63.5 inches diameter, edition of 5 with 2 AP

      “Unity VIII” (2024), UV-cured pigment, Dibond, and aluminum, 63 1/2 inches diameter, edition of 5 with 2 AP

      Installation view of “Shrine” (2025), silk, aluminum, wood, two Dichroic-coated acrylic sculptures, and Corian bases, approx. 74 13/16 x 362 3/16 x 189 inches. Photo by Jason Wyche

      “Unity I” (2024), UV-cured pigment, Dibond, and aluminum, 63 1/2 inches diameter, edition of 5 with 2 AP

      “Oshito Stone III” (2025), Dichroic-coated layered acrylic and Corian base, 43 5/16 x 34 7/16 x 35 13/16 inches, edition of 3 with 1 AP

      Installation view of ‘Radiance’ at Sean Kelly. New York. Photo by Jason Wyche

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 150 Shares51 Views

      in Art

      In ‘Nesting’ and ‘Wrapped,’ Natalie Ciccoricco Collages Reflections on Nature and Grief

      by

      Pieces from the ‘Nesting’ series. All images courtesy of Natalie Ciccoricco, shared with permission

      In ‘Nesting’ and ‘Wrapped,’ Natalie Ciccoricco Collages Reflections on Nature and Grief

      November 4, 2025

      ArtCraft

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Delicate geometries and organic forms combine in the elegant works of Natalie Ciccoricco. Often working with found materials, the artist threads multicolored string through handmade paper. In her ongoing Nesting series, the fiber envelops small twigs that gently interrupt the otherwise meticulous shapes—redolent of the way that trees themselves have the ability to grow around fences and other obstacles in their way.

      Ciccoricco has also recently been working on a series called Wrapped, a poignant exploration of loss and grief. Small panels collaged with colorful imagery are then wrapped tightly with bands of thin yarn.

      The collection emerged as a deeply personal response to the sudden loss of her son, literally encompassing emotions and experiences that art makes it possible to describe. “These are not somber artworks, but rather an expression of radical acceptance and a surrender to both love and grief,” she says in a statement.

      The artist has long been interested in the wide variety of ways that paper and fiber interact, from collaging found photographs with yarn details to hand-making paper in bespoke shapes. Lately, she has been focusing primarily on commissions, including pieces from the Nesting series at a Big Sur, California, hotel called Alila Ventana.

      “Between my own personal grief and the state of the world, I feel my art practice has become an important anchor in my life,” Ciccoricco shares. Her practice—and by extension, her pieces—channel a sense of calm, order, and harmony. “It’s both a tether to something beautiful and familiar, as well as a quiet resistance against all the fear, hate, and violence we are witnessing right now.”

      Find more on Ciccoricco’s website and Instagram.

      Pieces from the ‘Wrapped’ series

      “They Are the Sun and the Moon”

      “Still Silently Watching”

      Details of the ‘Nesting’ series

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Next article More

    • 138 Shares52 Views

      in Art

      Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade

      by

      “Etched in Soil” (2025), part of ‘She Weaves White Gold’ at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh. All images courtesy of Malaika Temba, shared with permission

      Jacquard Weavings by Malaika Temba Explore Material, Community, and Global Trade

      November 4, 2025

      Art

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      “My practice exists in the tension between rest and labor, between the intimacy of touch and the vast systems that shape our world,” says artist Malaika Temba. “Whether I am working on a small weaving or a large-scale installation, I am always asking what materials remember and who gets remembered through them.”

      Merging digital and analog processes, Temba creates layered textile pieces in an exploration of migration, labor, gender, global trade, and daily life. Using a Jacquard loom, she renders tender portraits of people and quotidian urban scenes, from friends seated together to deliveries being made to the hustle and bustle of daily life in the city.

      “Carry Home” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, acrylic paint, and fabric dye, 49 x 64 inches

      Growing up, Temba lived in Saudi Arabia, Uganda, South Africa, Morocco, and the United States. In moving between countries, the Tanzanian-American artist tells Colossal, “I was always struck by how fabric marks culture, and how pattern, texture, and material can tell you where you are by what people wear, how they use cloth, and what materials are available to them—whether found in nature, brought through trade, or produced by industry.”

      In art school, Temba learned to use a Jacquard loom, which enables weavers to create intricate patterns using an automated method. Invented in the early 19th century by Joseph Marie Jacquard, the machines originally used a punch card system. By the 1980s, electronic versions reflected advances in computing, and today, these intricate mechanisms can be programmed to create virtually any design.

      “I learned to use a Jacquard loom and became fascinated by its duality: the loom as one of the oldest forms of human-coded technology and the Jacquard as a machine capable of extraordinary innovation,” Temba says. The method itself parallels the artist’s interest in material and systems. Recently, she has been interested specifically in sisal, a cultivated plant and fiber deeply entwined with labor and trade in Tanzania. Sisal is often used to make durable products like rugs, rope, bags, and more.

      The artist currently has an installation titled She Weaves White Gold on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art, comprising three pieces set against ornate wallpaper. In this work, Temba employs sisal as both the primary material and the concept, as she portrays individuals and communities “carrying stories of work, migration, and endurance across geographies and through systems of production and exchange.”

      “(Aunties Patterned Dresses)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric, 60.5 x 51.5 inches.

      After creating the main textile element, Temba often hand-manipulates the fabric by unravelling areas, adding paint, and silkscreening. These layered elements add to a sense that the work is always in a state of flux—simultaneously constructed and undone. “Over time, these pieces have grown larger, more collaged, and richer in texture, capturing multiple moments within a single woven scene,” she says.

      Temba’s work honors the lives and labor of especially people in East Africa. “With tense elections in Tanzania and the ongoing war in Sudan, I am thinking a lot about visibility, dignity, and what it means to represent ordinary people at a time when their stories are often reduced to headlines or statistics,” she says. “Creating these works is a way of slowing down that narrative, of insisting that daily life—the gestures of care, the rhythm of work, and the persistence of women—has value and deserves to be seen.”

      She Weaves White Gold remains on view through autumn 2026 in Raleigh. Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

      “Beauty Salon” (2023), Jacquard woven fabric, silkscreen ink, painting, and sewing machine embroidery, 50 x 70 inches

      “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 69 x 51 3/4 inches

      Detail of “Blue Diana (I don’t know what lighter feels like)”

      “Preparing Dinner” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 61 x 52 inches

      “Veggie Market” (2025), Jacquard woven fabric and paint, 57.5 x 51.75 inches

      “Bismillah Auto Repair” (2024), Jacquard woven fabric, chalk, and sewing thread, 60 x 46 inches

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 138 Shares71 Views

      in Art

      Ceramics Mimic Cardboard in Jacques Monneraud’s Trompe-l’œil Ode to Giorgio Morandi

      by

      Photos by Natacha Nikouline. All images courtesy of Jacques Monneraud, shared with permission

      Ceramics Mimic Cardboard in Jacques Monneraud’s Trompe-l’œil Ode to Giorgio Morandi

      November 3, 2025

      ArtCraftDesign

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      A quick glimpse of Jacques Monneraud’s vessels give the impression of lighthearted craft time, with cardboard tubes and layered cutouts affixed with pieces of clear tape. Perhaps they’re maquettes for larger pieces or simply playful experiments with an inexpensive material. But look closer, and you’ll discover there’s a lot more to these vessels than they first let on. Namely, they’re actually ceramic.

      Monneraud’s ongoing CARTON series explores the relationship between material and perception. He blends three types of clay, then uses a potter’s wheel to throw the core shapes. When the form has dried to a leather-hard consistency, he trims where needed and refines the contours and edges, creating minute details that give the illusion of cut paper.

      Achieving the corrugated detail is one of the most time-consuming and labor-intensive processes, which Monneraud accomplishes by pressing a handmade wooden tool into the clay to create a series of triangular impressions. When all of the pieces come together, it appears as though a few pieces of cardboard were patched together with adhesive. In fact, each container is totally water-tight, and they certainly won’t wrinkle or warp!

      The artist recently conceived of a series of groupings in an ode to the subtle and playful oil paintings of Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964). The Italian artist is known for his muted still lifes of ceramics in which perspective, light, and shadow create nuanced compositions. He paid particular attention to the relationship between volume and line, often organizing items so that their tops all aligned or various elements appear to merge into other vessels’ details.

      In Monneraud’s current exhibition Life, still., on view in Brussels, Morandi’s compositions provide a jumping-off point for the trompe-l’œil ceramics. Pitchers, vases, jars, and other shapes mimic those Morandi rendered in oil, revisiting the painter’s approach to “cosiddetta realtà,” or “so-called reality.” He was interested in “the notion that meaning lies not in the subject itself, but in the way it is observed,” says a statement for Monneraud’s show.

      Life, still. is open on Saturdays through November at 38 Quai du Commerce in Brussels. Find more on Monneraud’s Instagram.

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More

    • 125 Shares63 Views

      in Art

      Irene Saputra Invents Elaborate, Playful Outfits in Her Vibrant Embroideries

      by

      Composite from the series ‘Arak Arakan Sepi.’ All images courtesy of Irene Seputra, shared with permission

      Irene Saputra Invents Elaborate, Playful Outfits in Her Vibrant Embroideries

      November 3, 2025

      ArtCraftDesign

      Kate Mothes

      Share

      Pin

      Email

      Bookmark

      Flowers, stars, leaves, eyes, and countless patterns transform into billowing garments in Irene Saputra’s vibrant embroideries. The South Jakarta-based artist, who also goes by Nengiren, repeats the playful motif of nona kecil, which means “little woman” in Indonesian.

      Saputra’s fashion-forward character might be described as a clotheshorse who dons numerous bold outfits, some of which seem to have personalities of their own. Saputra has often referred to these styles as OOTD’s, or outfits of the day, borrowing from a hashtag historically used by fashion influencers on social media.

      “Arak Arakan Sepi 2”

      The faceless figure’s cropped bob and black boots are the only commonality, as always-symmetrical wide-leg trousers or dresses vary widely. Through color, scale, and repetition, Saputra’s hand-stitched characters also coordinate and complement one another. Some, like the Arak Arakan Sepi series—meaning “quiet procession” in Indonesian—are more abstract and bulbous, while others, like “ARTSUBS,” depict more realistic outfits.

      Saputra draws on a background in graphic design and illustration, which she applies to her fiber compositions. Through the lens of women’s fashion and personal expression, she channels optimism and her own journey of motherhood. Find more on Instagram.

      “ARTSUBS”

      “Soft Spot”

      Detail of “Soft Spot”

      “Kebun Tengah Malam”

      Detail of “Kebun Tengah Malam”

      Arak Arakan Sepi 1

      “Melankoli Biru”

      “Musim Menyapa Kembali”

      Arak Arakan Sepi 3

      Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member now, and support independent arts publishing.

      Hide advertising

      Save your favorite articles

      Get 15% off in the Colossal Shop

      Receive members-only newsletter

      Give 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms

      Join us today!

      $7/month

      $75/year

      Explore membership options

      Previous articleNext article More