Thousands of individual flowers and plants grown in Meggan Joy’s Seattle garden form the contours of her ethereal figures. The artist (previously) collages perfectly trimmed photographs of each specimen into silhouettes lush with color and texture.

In her most recent body of work titled Fever Dream, Joy draws on fear, loss, and the immense potential for pain. “Wide and Wild,” for example, depicts a woman cradling a Eurasian Eagle Owl near her heart. “She’s a piece for when you find your person (whether that be a lover, friend, kids, whatever), and once you have them, you know that if they disappear in any way, you also will be gone,” the artist shares in a statement.

Others relate to bad decisions yielding positive experiences and how etermal bonds require patience and understanding. Each work, Joy shares, “whisper(s) the components of the stories that tested us and, instead of condemning our faults, reveal that those moments left us the most exciting scars.

Fever Dream is on view through September 25 at J. Rinehart Gallery. Follow Joy’s work on Instagram.

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Teahupo’o, a village located on Tahiti’s southeastern coast, boasts a shallow and precipitous coral reef system that creates a unique surf break, resulting in some of the largest waves on Earth. These powerful, barreling surges draw in surfers from around the world, including photographer Tim McKenna.

From a young age, McKenna surfed on the west coasts of France and later Australia. He’s deeply fascinated by the power of the ocean and its constant mood changes from serene ripples to towering swells. The photographer began documenting waves as he rode in their heaving movements and eventually settled in Teahupo’o, where he’s lived for more than 20 years.

Find more on McKenna’s website and Instagram. (via Kottke)

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Fashion is one way the Andean women of Peru’s Valle Sagrado region retain cultural traditions. In Donde Florecen Estas Flores, or Where These Flowers Bloom, Ana Flores returns to her native Cusco to photograph their timeless style and better connect with her own heritage.

Flores spent much of her childhood disconnected from her Indigenous heritage. “Growing up, I was taught to strive for white European superiority, without questioning the vestiges of colonialism,” she shares.

As an adult, Flores renewed ties with her birthplace and traveled to Cusco repeatedly to photograph those living in the region. “I established a connection with a local research centre that works closely with various Indigenous women-led craft collectives,” she said. “It was crucial for me to revisit this area to begin building the foundations for a trusting and long-lasting relationship with the women involved in this project.”

Shot in film, the photographs in Donde Florecen Estas Flores meld Flores’s background in fashion photography with her keen interest in exploring the ways places shape us. She collaborated with Peruvian art director Lia Lazaro and assistants Guillermo Orihuela and Cayetano García Sahurie to create a series not unlike the spreads in fashion magazines. In her photos, women wear garments like handmade pleated skirts known as polleras, slips underneath, and simple sandals called ojotas in both traditional and novel ways, all set against the magnificent natural beauty of the highlands.

“I aim to create positive and powerful images which shift the stereotypical representation of Indigenous women from marginalised and passive, to celebrating them as dynamic and fundamental aspects of culture,” she says.

Flores is currently based in London and plans to travel to Peru to continue the project in the coming months. Find more of her work on Instagram. (via It’s Nice That)

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While heavy, hardcover reference books often embody prestige and historical value, the comprehensive volumes also carry an air of intellectual overload. Filled from cover to cover with extensive and complex concepts, the tomes beckon the Paradox of Knowledge, which states that the more we learn, the more we realize how little we actually know.

This vexing liminal space between the known and unknown is a driving force for Barbara Wildenboer’s work. The Cape Town-based artist (previously) sources secondhand books that span a wide range of languages, worldviews, and subjects such as philosophy, art, history, music, biology, archaeology, and more. Fascinated by linguistics and systems of writing, Wildenboer aims to decode the ways that we assign meaning to symbols.

Scalpel and scissors in hand, Wildenboer transforms countless book pages into narrow, capillary-like slivers that splay outward from the spine. Through these symmetrical sculptures, the artist references other naturally mirrored forms like the brain’s left and right hemispheres linked by the corpus callosum, the wingspan of the death’s-head hawkmoth, and the Rorshach inkblot.

Wildenboer connects these formal qualities to the process of deciphering texts. Her biography notes, “she cuts through these dense and claustrophobic discourses, rendering them mute.” Instead, she alters books to the point that they’re no longer legible, transforming the once familiar characters into new glyphs.

See more from the artist on her website and Instagram.

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The familiar rustling of an aluminum-lined potato chip bag is almost inseparable from the universal experience of eating the salty, crispy treat. But when you pick up Vi Nguyen’s snack packs, the sensation is replaced by the soft rattling and cool touch of glass beads.

Nguyen found beading in a transitional time when experiencing serious health obstacles and career changes. The meditative, rewarding technique became her happy place, and she eventually found herself creating embroidered pieces that allotted for up to 40 hours of meticulous work threading hundreds of seed beads, most of them only about two millimeters in diameter.

The Southern California-based artist’s work is inspired by the nostalgia of previously living in New York City. Creating recognizable renditions of popular bites from around the corner, Nguyen embodies the spirit of bodegas in the bustling city.

In a conversation regarding her current exhibition titled Beaded Bodega, Nguyen shares, “There are so many life events that happen where my bodega has seen it all. From grabbing a drink and lottery ticket to celebrate landing a new job to buying a pint of ice cream and chips to soak in your sorrows to getting your first BEC after being out of town. Food and snacks can evoke such a memory so being able to transform them into beaded artwork is my ode to New York and your local bodega.”

Beaded Bodega is on view at Gotham until September 18. For more munchies, visit the artist’s Instagram and 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 What’s Your Bodega Order? Vi Nguyen’s Beaded Bites Evoke the Spirit of NYC Corner Stores appeared first on Colossal.