Nested in one of Hiné Mizushima’s wooden dioramas is an ancient marine menagerie. Vibrant blue felt lines the walls of the plush environment, which houses a pair of ammonites along with tall seagrass and small bits of coral reef.

From her Vancouver studio, Mizushima stitches whimsical renditions of underwater creatures. Her soft, fiber sculptures take a playful approach to natural life, sometimes perching an octopus atop a human heart or finding a moray eel slithering out of an artery. Often depicted in pastel colors and adorned with beads and crocheted details, the creatures are friendly and even glitzy interpretations of their real-life counterparts.

The works shown here will be on view in Mizushima’s solo show Creatures and Curiosities on view from September 14 to October 22 at Boris Zakkaten in Tokyo. Find more on Instagram.

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When Brian Rochefort travels, he’s inclined to visit remote parts of the planet. The depths of the Amazon, the volcanic island cluster of the Galápagos, and the immensely diverse ecosystem of Tanzania’s Ngorongoro Crater have all drawn him in and once back in his Los Angeles studio, inspired the artist’s lushly textured sculptures.

Rochefort (previously) is known for his gloopy, chunky vessels that appear to ooze and gurgle with vivid color. A new body of work debuting at Sean Kelly, Los Angeles this month continues the artist’s interest in how abstract forms can translate the myriad textures and compositions of the natural world.

Staring at the Moon presents Rochefort’s visions of barrier reefs, tropical forests, and volcanic matter into fantastic works. Cloaked in crackled, drippy, and rough chunks of color, each piece emerges through multiple applications of texture followed by as many firings, and sometimes, the glazes remain thicker than the ceramic base.

“One of the things I try to do is remove the hand. There are no brushstrokes. There are no fingerprints,” he said in a short film about the series. “It’s as if the piece came from outer space… or the depths of the ocean.”

Staring at the Moon runs from September 14 to November 2. Explore an archive of Rochefort’s work on Instagram.

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Vintage, mass-produced porcelain knick-knacks take on new life in Debra Broz’s intricate and uncanny hybrids (previously). Collies and St. Bernards with the bodies of pheasants meet rabbits with curiously long appendages and woodland creatures with human arms.

In her solo exhibition Strange World at Track 16, Broz continues to explore the subversive and absurd through the leitmotif of midcentury kitsch. Whether merging two small sculptures or creating elaborate amalgamations, the artist finds the humor—and just a tinge of unease—in busyness, cuteness, and perplexity.

Strange World, which incorporates dozens of sculptures and glazed platters, revolves around three maximalist assemblages made of hundreds of individual figurines Broz collected during the past decade. Clusters of adorable animals like big-eyed bunnies, ducks, and cows emerge from bases as if blossoming with energy.

In a statement for the show, Track 16 describes the pieces as “darkly optimistic, synthesizing the confusion of limitless information.” Chaotic and idiosyncratically beautiful, Broz’s pieces tap into our contemporary social reality, balancing tension and overwhelm with moments of levity and clarity.

Strange World continues through October 12 in Los Angeles. Find more on Broz’s website and Instagram.

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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.

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Noriyuki Saitoh’s (previously) fascination with insects and painstaking attention to detail transforms delicate pieces of wood into intricate sculptures. Using a range of bamboo materials, including thin paper, he carefully carves the architecture of dragonfly wings, mantis legs, and beetle antennae. While primarily made from wood, he sometimes adds other tiny materials like stone to accentuate the specimens’ eyes.

Explore an ever-growing ecosystem on Saitoh’s website, where he often documents biological facts about each animal and photographs their dramatic interactions.

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As a child, Ashley Suszczynski used to draw copiously in her school notebooks and escape into the chimerical worlds of books. “I loved the imaginative illustrations,” she tells Colossal. “Each story sent me into a new world, and I kind of dissociated from my own… Every page was full of magic and mystery—an immersive adventure into lands of mythical monsters, talking animals, the weird and the wonderful.”

The fascination with legends and supernatural creatures persisted into adulthood, forming the basis of Suszczynski’s love for photography, folklore, and cultures around the world. “Several years ago, I learned about a masquerade in the north of Spain called La Vijanera,” she says. “The characters looked like those I had imagined from the pages of my childhood stories.” Anthropomorphic, fur-covered creatures met tree nymphs and spirits of the woodlands, all enrobed in remarkably elaborate handmade costumes.

Suszczynski delved into further research about European masking rituals and rites, learning about the range of characters, history, and symbolism unique to each tradition. Festivals throughout the continent often centered on common themes, like the cycle of the seasons, life and death, or fertility, while expressing themselves through distinctive costumes. “It seemed as though every tiny village had their own unique ancient rituals that were still thriving in our modern society,” she says.

Language barriers are often the primary obstacle Suszczynski encounters as she travels around the world to meet those who preserve their local customs. In small, rural communities, people often only speak their native language. “There isn’t really any information on the internet about these groups,” she says. “Finding them is always like a treasure hunt. Sometimes I would just drive to a village, go to their town hall with my phone, and Google Translate to the mayor, asking if they had masks there. The townspeople were extremely helpful; they’d often organize the village group with only a day or two notice.”

Some of the characters Suszczynski meets in her ongoing travels include the Bulgarian Kukeri, variations on which may be called Startsi or Chaushi, among others. Elaborate headdresses and costumes made from wool, animal horns, embroidered fabric, bells, and other ornaments invoke the mystical power to usher in new seasons and scare away evil spirits.

Capturing the right image poses the next major challenge, as Suszczynski works hard to make people comfortable despite not speaking the same language, and she has formed close friendships in the process. “After nearly every photoshoot, we would wind up in someone’s living room, sharing food and brandy together, looking through old photos, laughing, and learning,” she says.

Suszczynski emphasizes that her role, akin to the people she photographs, is that of a storyteller. Through a visual medium, she hopes to share knowledge and understanding of age-old customs to further the preservation efforts of their bearers. “I want to show people how lesser-known cultures, relics, rites, and rituals have withstood time and evolved in our ever-changing world,” she says.

This winter, Suszczynski is planning to photograph some festivals in Mexico and Latin America, and she just finished up documenting the festival of Virgin del Carmen in Paucartambo, Peru. “I am so thankful for each and every person I have photographed,” Suszczynski says. “I couldn’t do any of this without their passion and willingness to share their time, energy, and culture.”

Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram. And you might also enjoy Killian Lassablière’s short documentary “Kukeri” or Roberto de la Torre’s portraits of elaborately masked characters in northern Spain’s Entroidos.

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While a seaweed known as bladderwrack might not sound like something you’d want to eat, the unique kelp is in fact quite tasty and gets its name from small air pockets in its leaves akin to tiny bladders. For glass artist Andrea Spencer, the tendrils, bulbs, fronds, and combinations of organisms provide the starting point for an ongoing series of elegant sculptures.

Just inland of the rugged North Antrim coastline in Northern Ireland, Spencer and her husband, glassblower Scott Benefield, work in studios set up in outbuildings of a former farm. “My process usually starts with collecting or recalling something seen or found in the natural world,” Spencer says. “This becomes a point of departure, and I proceed by manipulating and transforming the material: creating, assembling, and arranging forms.” Back in her studio, she displays the items she’s collected by suspending or pinning them into layered compositions and capturing them in drawings or glass.

Spencer first became interested in the medium during a two-year program focused on constructed textiles, when her research led her toward stained glass. She became enthralled by the work of John Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, and she traveled around England to document as much of their work as she could find. The artist then enrolled in the Architectural Glass program at the University of Edinburgh before moving to Northern Ireland and devoting time to studio work as much as possible.

The challenge of portraying realistic botanicals is matched by Spencer’s interest in physical fragility. “I am intrigued with how the material behaves when it is pushed to the extreme and how glass will display the evidence of that behaviour,” she says. “Often the pieces I make are exceedingly fragile.” The walls of hollow forms can sometimes be as thin as an eggshell, and suspended pieces hang by glass threads less than a millimeter thick.

“My pieces are more than mere botanical or sea life models, though,” she says. Her sculptures often take the form of flowers or foliage found on land, inspired by interactions with light and conceptually linking nature to humanity. “Leaf veining recalls our own circulatory system; a mermaid’s purse becomes a womb,” she says. “The fragility of the natural object aligns with the delicacy of the glass object, which speaks to the perilous aspects of life in general.”

Spencer is currently focused on teaching, preparing work for forthcoming group shows in London and Belfast and designing a custom glass ornament commissioned by a Royal establishment. Keep an eye on the artist’s website and Instagram for updates, and purchase pieces directly from Benefield Spencer Glass Shop.

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When artist Lee ShinJa was born in 1930 in Uljin, Korea, during a period of Japanese colonial rule,  textile traditions were largely rooted in domestic uses and craft. But for Lee, who took in her mother’s and grandmother’s lessons in sewing and weaving, fiber proved to be a material of experimentation and innovation.

Weaving the Dawn, the artist’s New York debut at Tina Kim Gallery, showcases several decades’ worth of tapestries that challenge the boundaries of the art form. On view are preliminary sketches, research, and works that highlight the evolution of her techniques and style.

Early pieces like “Image of City” punctuate smooth cotton cloth with patches of loose, meandering threads in neutral tones, while later works like “Spirit of Mountain” are rendered in full color. A bright turquoise sky spans the tapestry with monumental landforms rising in the foreground. Part of a larger series evoking the topography of Lee’s hometown, the piece emerged from a desire to capture the unparalleled beauty of her birthplace. The artist explained:

Growing up in a rural area, I vividly remember the intense sunlight at sunrise and sunset. I have cherished memories of climbing mountains with my father every morning to witness these moments. The sunlight rising from the East Sea left a lasting impression on me. I have always believed in creating nature as I see it. However, I still feel that my work has yet to match the beauty of my hometown.

Lee is often lauded for her technical innovation and commitment to exploring the possibilities of fiber. The aforementioned “Image of City” is one such example. “She unraveled the plain weave of the base fabric and twisted subtly colored threads to the loosened ones to create a structural tension previously unseen in traditional textiles,” a statement from the gallery says.

In addition to her inventive approaches, Lee also introduced unconventional materials, including thin metal dowels that bisect abstract landscapes and geometric forms in works like “Hope.” She also incorporated burlap sacks and unraveled wool sweaters, a practice she developed while studying at Seoul National University in 1955 while Korea was recovering from the war.

“I love creating new things, and there were no teachers to learn from at university, so I worked independently,” Lee told Artsy. “I wanted to do something different from what others were doing. The establishment of textiles as an academic field in Korea didn’t come until much later.”

Given her autobiographical subject matter—which includes the landscapes of her childhood and also her responses to her husband, the painter  Jan Woonsang, being credited with making her early work—Lee’s tapestries can be read as a feminist infusion of personal experience and critique. That she’s helped to garner art-world recognition for what’s long been considered a domestic craft firmly secures her place among 20th-century pioneering women artists.

Weaving the Dawn runs through September 28.

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In terms of genes, humans are actually more closely related to mushrooms than plants! That’s because key characteristics—how we store energy, how our cells are built, and our ability to produce Vitamin D when exposed to the sunlight—are found in fungi but not trees or grass. And that’s only the beginning of our fascination with the mycological world, which yields an endless source of inspiration for avid forager, educator, and artist Julie Beeler.

Beeler’s new book, The Mushroom Color Atlas: A Guide to Dyes and Pigments Made From Fungi, dives into the chromatic world of mushrooms. Published by Chronicle Books, the volume is part field guide and part how-to, shepherding readers through identifying different species, harvesting, and distilling a range of hues. The author has collected 500 swatches to illustrate the phenomenal range of natural colors that can be made from different varieties.

While Beeler provides step-by-step instructions for making your own hues, above all The Mushroom Color Atlas emphasizes foraging and hand-processing pigments as a way to more intimately connect with nature, sparking the joy of discovery through creativity and exploration. Grab your copy in the Colossal Shop, and you might also enjoy browsing through the chromatic world of fungus on the project’s website.

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