2026-11-14 01:13:57
In the second stanza of “How to Be a Poet,” Wendell Berry wrote: “There are no unsacred places; / there are only sacred places / and desecrated places.” When it comes to preserving important historical locations, such as monuments, parks, and buildings, a new interactive public art installation asks, “what happens when preservation itself is endangered?”
The Sacred Ordinary is an initiative organized by 1504, a production studio based in Birmingham that emphasizes in-depth storytelling to connect people with meaningful, human-focused services and experiences. The participatory artwork is presented in collaboration with the National Parks Conservation Association, which aims to protect U.S. national parks for future generations.
In early 2025, President Trump issued an executive order that mandated the removal of some National Park Service signage relating to slavery, the LGBTQ+ community, climate change, and more, a move that erases histories inextricable from the nation’s identity. (The current administration has also blocked millions in funding for numerous parks and disrupted services.)
In Birmingham, the Civil Rights District is formally designated a national monument, comprising neighborhoods that Black people historically called home and where Jim Crow laws authorized segregation until the 1960s. The Civil Rights Movement reached a nexus here when activists Fred Shuttlesworth, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ralph Abernathy, among many others, organized nonviolent marches in 1963, known today as the Birmingham Campaign. Police turned their dogs on demonstrators and used fire hoses on children. A bombing at a Baptist church killed four young Black girls.
The Sacred Ordinary venerates access to things most of us take for granted: the ability to shop at any store, attend the nearest school, walk around any neighborhood, and sit at the front of the bus. The exhibition is installed around-the-clock, but by day, elements of the installation comprise vintage yet mundane objects that one typically walks by without giving a second thought.
A huge midcentury television rests on an open lawn, and a red newspaper vending box for The Birmingham News, which ceased its print publication in 2012, advertises 25 cents per copy. Additional sites include a characteristically blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox and a walk-in telephone booth. Sheets of paper with tear-off tabs posted around town invite participants to learn more by texting a phone number. If you text “HERE” to the number, you’ll be directed to a starting point and an otherwise nondescript yellow fire hydrant.
In scavenger-hunt style, visitors are prompted to enter the year stamped on the unit, and if it’s between 5 and 8 p.m., the sequence of texted prompts doubles as a multimedia self-guided tour of Birmingham’s Civil Rights District like you’ve never seen it: the television screen, mailbox, phone booth, and more begin to glow once the sun has set.
“Birmingham, Alabama, is known around the world for such places—sites of civil rights history that many regard as sacred and that connect us to something larger than ourselves. But today, that memory is endangered,” 1504 says in a statement. “Aging infrastructure, the passing of a generation of foot soldiers, and federal efforts to erase chapters of American history raise an urgent question: if institutions alone cannot sustain history, what role can the public play in caring for sacred sites?”
Rather than center primarily on signage, The Sacred Ordinary focuses on objects associated with civic life in the mid-20th century, evoking collective memories and providing touchpoints for younger generations for whom boxy televisions, printed newspapers, and telephone booths feel distant from today’s experiences. Emblematic of the way news and information spread before the internet and smartphones, the objects confront visitors with not only the realities of how people organized and communicated during that time but also how those memories are preserved today. Even without didactics, objects and places carry meaning that no one can simply delete.
The tour opens with a narration by actor André Holland, who played a fundamental role in preserving a historic theater in nearby Bessemer, Alabama, and 1504 has dedicated the installation to Birmingham-based artist Joe Minter. The Sacred Ordinary continues nightly through December 13, with accompanying guided walks and other programs scheduled in the meantime. Learn more on the project’s website, and explore the studio’s work on Instagram. You might also be interested in “The Praise House,” directed by 1504’s Tyler Jones.
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2026-11-13 22:53:38
Celestial filmmaker Seán Doran is back with a new project that interprets stellar snapshots from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. The footage-like video tours the sun and reveals its fiery surface complete with brilliant solar flares, all depicted in a distinctive crimson.
To create the film, Doran attributed various pinks and reds to different wavelengths, creating an alluring interpretation of the fiery orb. Doran stitched together NASA’s captures, or more accurately, he says, the images were “conformed, repaired, graded, blended, rescaled and retimed” into a seamless film. “Crimson Star” is one of several astral projects he’s undertaken in recent years, and you can keep up with his latest works on YouTube. (via Kottke)
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2026-11-13 06:00:52
Looking at the serene paintings that emerge from Sky Glabush’ s studio, it’s easy to feel a soft breeze sliding off bare summer shoulders or hear the crunch of leaves underfoot, their parched fibers reverberating across the autumn landscape. Transportive and atmospherically charged, the landscapes harness the allure of texture to draw the viewer in and invite them to stay a while.
Raised on the west coast of British Columbia and currently based in rural Ontario, Glabush has long been attuned to the natural world. He often identifies the feelings he associates with a particular place and translates that through color and intuitive interpretations of the terrain: the spindly, strangely straight tree trunks of a forest, for example, or the ways a sunflower echoes the radial form of the sun.
Glabush typically utilizes limited palettes that adhere to just one or two color families. He also mixes oil paint with granular particles, sand being the most common, although he’s used crushed quartz and raw pigment. Originally, the idea of combining materials emerged because the artist wanted, he says, to “obliterate the image… But I realized it didn’t destroy the image. It was still present and humming under that surface layer. So it gave me the freedom of deciding what I wanted to hold on to or what I wanted to erase.”
Adding and removing has since become integral to Glabush’s practice, which involves adding thin stains of paint and turpentine to the point of the painting becoming relief-like. He tends to begin with an architectural structure that anchors the work. Sometimes a grid and others a radial arrangement, the foundational patterns inform each resulting layer. Color, though, is always “the unifying principle, it is the energy and dynamism, it is the element of surprise. Each painting often goes through several iterations of colour before deciding on a direction.”
Although he’s worked with other materials in the past and has particularly enjoyed carving, the conventions and limitations of painting always drew him back. “That period of experimentation with sculpture allowed me to treat my paintings in a more physically robust and experimental way. But even during my most experimental period, I saw myself as a painter and wanted to find a way to express myself within that language,” he tells Colossal.
Some of the works here will be on view in Glabush’s solo exhibition, If the Wild Bird Could Speak, on view from November 20 to January 9 at Alison Jacques in London. Until then, explore more of his paintings on Instagram.
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 Sky Glabush Conjures Atmospheric Landscapes in Sand and Oil Paint appeared first on Colossal.
2026-11-13 02:08:37
A confection of arches and windows has emerged in the Gospel Oak neighborhood of Camden in northwest London, thanks to Peter Morris Architects and a unique collaborative ownership approach. “The Cloud House,” which actually comprises two side-by-side townhomes, practically froths from its foundations. One side is occupied by the architect himself along with his partner, Emily, while the other half is owned by a resident who embraced the stylistic potential of the project and agreed to the exterior design and the same contractor.
Ten years in the making, “The Cloud House” is a playful response to its eclectic neighboring architecture, from the quirky Victorian church of St. Martin’s to a school next door that has a stone exterior mimicking a castle. Morris conceived of a bright, whimsical design with pink walls, robin’s egg-blue window frames and doors, and arched details in relief made from a dense recyclable polystyrene that mirrors the arches of the church across the street. See more on the firm’s Instagram.
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2026-11-12 22:51:12
From fungi and insects to technology and crystals, the winning entries in the 2026 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition reveal astonishing details typically invisible to the naked eye. This year’s top prize went to Ole Bielfeldt, a student and experimental photographer based in Cologne, Germany, who used a hand-built rig to capture an incredible up-close view of droplets inside of an inkjet printer. Runners-up included John-Oliver Dum’s portrait of a jumping spider with pollen on its body and Kaelin Wulf and Rachel Flannery’s capture of mouse neurons.
Winner images were organized into three categories: Top 20, Honorable Mentions, and Images of Distinction. Explore some of our favorites here, and head to the contest’s website to see all of this year’s best photos. You might also enjoy the Nikon Small World in Motion video competition.
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 Get Up-Close to Cells, Ink, and Insects in the Nikon Small World Photomicrography Contest appeared first on Colossal.
2026-11-11 07:15:05
Ask a seasoned collector about their first acquisition, and you’re likely to hear that they began with limited-edition prints. Often accessible in price point yet bearing the artist’s signature and maybe even hand embellishments, prints are the perfect entry point for people interested in living with art each and every day.
For the holidays, our partners at Joy Machine have graciously curated a special collection of limited-edition prints for the budding collector in your life.
Liz Flores: “Untitled” (2026)
Sentrock: “Better Days Ahead” (2026)
Mar Figueroa: “Untitled” (2024)
Anna Valdez: “Untitled” (2026)
Cody Hudson: “Self-Sufficiency Mono Print (Tangerine Variant)” (2024)
Stevie Shao: “Untitled” (2026)
Jess Ackerman: “Untitled” (2023)
Explore many more prints on Joy Machine.
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 Limited-Edition Screenprints for the Budding Collector appeared first on Colossal.