2026-04-23 01:52:00
Grainy textures and gestural lines characterize the lush compositions of Tania Yakunova. Collaborating with a range of commercial and editorial clients, the Kyiv-born illustrator harnesses the visual impact of bold shapes and vibrant color palettes to convey brand narratives and inexpressible feelings. Bare feet planted in dandelion-strewn grass and a greenhouse-style figure housing flowers attempting to burst from the glass cages, for example, conjure Yakunova’s homesickness, since she left her native Ukraine for London in 2023.
The artist’s distinct expressions translate across mediums, whether working in hand-built ceramic sculpture, painting, or digital and graphite illustration. Keep an eye out for new print releases and her latest projects on Instagram.
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2026-04-22 23:30:00
Spikes, fans, florets, waves, and other characteristics of marine creatures continue to shape the work of Lisa Stevens. The Bristol-based artist’s vibrant practice revolves around ceramic sculptures inspired by sea urchins, coral, nudibranchs, and other underwater organisms. Each piece is unique, with numerous colorful glazes and textures, and they often take on a fantastical quality, incorporating hybrid features that conjure associations with celestial objects, anatomy, and other facets of nature.
Find more on Stevens’ Instagram, plus watch clay sculpting tutorials on YouTube.
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2026-04-22 20:10:30
In folklore, twilight is often interpreted as a liminal, even magical time during which spirits emerge in the transition between light and dark. It’s sometimes even seen as a period when extra caution is advised, as will-o’-the-wisps, shapeshifters, and fae may try to influence people in their path. For artist Nicholas Moegly, nightfall sets the scene for neighborhoods and quiet streets in which curious creatures roam, and lights flicker on in houses, signaling the end of the day.
Many of Moegly’s works possess a dreamy realism along the lines of photographer Todd Hido’s Houses at Night or the illustrations of children’s book author Chris Van Allsburg. There is both a timelessness and a sense that these locations could represent virtually anywhere around the U.S. Sometimes, deer and foxes meander through yards or down alleyways, glancing backward as if responding to a sound. In other compositions, lights shine from upper windows of a house or shop on a hazy street corner, although people are nowhere to be seen.
Moegly is currently in the midst of the largest oil painting he’s made thus far, experimenting with the relationship between scale and realism in a way that’s challenging his artistic direction. He’s also working toward future exhibitions, transitioning from online releases to more in-person shows. See more on his Instagram.
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2026-04-22 04:48:39
The economy of Peru’s Sacred Valley has long been entwined with the seasons. Rural communities typically grow crops and raise livestock to sustain themselves and to barter with others, a process that necessitates an attunement with nature, its cycles, and how these patterns influence self-sufficiency.
This is particularly true for the Quechua communities, Indigenous peoples who have long worked for subsistence rather than state currencies. In recent years, health clinics, schools, markets, and transportation requiring residents to use cash have slowly eroded this way of life. Today, many Quechua men leave their communities to work in tourism, which offers an income and the opportunity to learn Spanish. Conversely, women often remain at home to care for children and farms, making them dependent on support from their partners and family members.
In 2009, the nonprofit Awamaki formed to aid communities around Ollantaytambo, Cusco, as they navigated this change. U.S.-based Kennedy Leavens and Miguel Galdo, of Peru, had worked together previously at a similar organization supporting 10 women weavers from Patacancha. When that project shuddered, the two decided to found Awamaki to maintain their support.
The nonprofit grew quickly, and today, it assists nine cooperatives, comprising 174 artisans and community members who work across craft and tourism. With collaboration at its core, Awamaki prides itself on sustainability and focuses on broadening its partners’ access to a diverse array of markets and economic opportunities.
In addition to financial changes, the climate crisis is rapidly transforming the ways of the Sacred Valley, which faces disproportionate impacts as glaciers melt and the water supply dwindles. “The shift towards having personal income, for our artisan partners, is not about replacing traditional livelihoods, but about widening the economic ground beneath them so they can move their families towards prosperity and build resiliency to the effects of climate change, all without leaving the community or traditional ways of life,” the nonprofit tells us.
Partnering with Awamaki allows cooperative members to focus on traditional spinning, dyeing, and weaving traditions, while the nonprofit offers structural support in selling their goods and coordinating tourism. Carving through the terrain north of Cusco, the Andean highlands were once home to the Incans and still hold traces of the ancient empire, like the historic city of Machu Picchu, which continues to attract around one million people from around the globe each year. For many years, the organization says, visitors would arrive in villages without prior notice, and the women would halt their work to meet tourists and hopefully, sell a piece.
And of course, this way of making is demanding, as women not only weave, but also raise alpacas, shear their wool, and spin and dye the soft fibers into yarn. “Before weaving, I have to wash my hands carefully so the wool doesn’t get damaged. It requires attention and care,” Ricardina, an Awamaki member from the Cusci Qoyllur cooperative, tells us. “Sometimes I can weave more, sometimes less. It depends on time, on my children, on everything else I have to do.”
Today, Awamaki helps to coordinate tourism and provide compensation for visits. This includes programs like Murmur Ring’s immersion, which will bring a group of creatives to the region this June. “Our role is to create opportunities that can be compatible with cultural continuity, if that is what communities themselves want,” they say, adding:
For women, without personal income, everyday decisions can feel distant. Paying for school supplies, buying medicine, covering transportation costs, buying food to supplement the limited traditional crops that grow at high altitude–all of these depend on uncertain flows of money and shifting household dynamics. As climate patterns grow more erratic, with harsher frosts, longer dry spells, and thinning pasture, even the agricultural base families rely on has become less predictable, deepening that sense of financial fragility.
This regular support has simultaneously buoyed many women to greater financial independence and helped retain their way of life. “When new artisans join a cooperative, they are typically mentored by other women in their own community. Cultural knowledge remains community-held and community-led,” the nonprofit shares.
“In my family, we make decisions together—about how to earn and how to move forward,” Daniela, a weaver from the Puskariy Tika cooperative, says. “Through this work, we are able to keep going and improve our lives little by little.”
Nadia, of the Rumia cooperative, echoes this sentiment. “Being part of Awamaki changed things for us. Now we have a steady income, and that allows us to keep weaving,” she says. “In our community, it’s not always easy. Some people say, ‘Why do you weave?’ But they don’t understand this work… We also teach our children to care for the environment, to grow things, to respect the land. That’s part of our work, too.”
To learn more about the women and support their work, visit Awamaki’s website.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article How One Cooperative Champions the Quechua Weavers of Peru’s Sacred Valley appeared first on Colossal.
2026-04-21 20:00:00
Building sites and agricultural areas are typically described by the utilitarian operations that shape them—rugged, harsh, and often back-breaking. They are spaces that resist softness, built quite literally around force and tension. Artist Pia Hinz flips this idea on its head as she explores the conceptual and material relationship between strength and vulnerability.
Living and working between Ardèche, Amsterdam, and Arles, France, Hinz has been working with stained glass for the past three years. She focuses much of her work on objects that one might find in environments of labor, such as construction or farming. Her sculptures take on an array of recognizable forms including hammers, screws, traffic cones, tractor doors, scythes, rope, and more.
By introducing glass, Hinz subverts the practical purpose of tools and machinery as each object emerges antithetical to its original form. “Here, fragility and invincibility intertwine,” says an exhibition statement from La Menuiserie 2, a residency the artist completed in 2024. “By replacing functional materials with fragile ones, the artist questions our relationship to objects, their use value, and their narrative potential.”
As light passes through the artist’s work, it spills across surrounding spaces and results in shifts of color. Pieces like “MON PRÉCIEUX” and “Néon sacré” are elegantly adorned with abstract, geometric patterns that are shaped by winding metal lines. For Hinz, working with the material is, as she describes, an “urge to retrace the relation between light and space.”
The artist is currently working on a permanent stained glass monument for a building in Paris. Find more on Instagram.
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2026-04-21 00:00:00
When we think of “invasive species,” perhaps zebra mussels or kudzu vine spring to mind. Both have flourished in their non-native environments and continue to threaten other native organisms. Invasive species aren’t inherently bad—they’re just trying to survive—but by definition, they’re likely to disrupt local ecosystems and even cause billions of dollars worth of damage each year. So, what does one California city have to say about its burgeoning population of… peacocks?
Introduced by a businessman and land baron named Elias Lucky Baldwin more than a century ago, the avian population has long called the area home. Over the years, though, as the originally open area filled with homes and commercial strips, efforts by local residents end up at odds, as some would like to protect the birds and others would prefer to see them sent away altogether. In a short film titled “Our Neighbors, the Peacocks,” filmmaker Callie Barlow traces the unusual history of peafowl in Los Angeles County through the eyes of some of its current residents.
Arcadia, California, sits in the San Gabriel Valley about 45 minutes from downtown Los Angeles. Dozens of peacocks, which are carefully watched over by some and detested by others, meander through residents’ yards, traipse around on rooftops, peck at cars, call from trees, and of course, display their beautiful feathers—especially during mating season.
In her short documentary, Barlow invites locals to share their love—or loathing—for the vibrant birds as she highlights how Arcadia’s history of protecting the birds has perhaps led to something of an overpopulation problem. Nearby neighborhoods participate in relocation programs, while Arcadia’s birds are protected, and opinions about how to deal with growing numbers land all along the spectrum.
“‘Our Neighbors, the Peacocks’ resists the urge to resolve the tension it so clearly lays out,” says Jason Sondhi, who selected the film for Short of the Week. “Instead, it leans into a modest but resonant idea articulated by its director that living alongside these animals might require ‘putting aside your own discomforts to find a deeper meaning in nature.'”
See the film on YouTube.
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Our Neighbors, the Peacocks’ Paints a Portrait of an Unusual Convergence of Populations appeared first on Colossal.