Layers of colored pencil and marble dust worked into an oil-like substance flood the linen planes on which Marin Majic works. The Brooklyn-based artist builds upon a foundational drawing, blending various media into a richly textured surface resembling fabric or plaster. Matte finishes radiate across the scenes, appearing like magical glimmers under a night sky.

Steeped in mystery, Majic’s works gravitate toward questions of power, impermanence, and the slippery nature of reality. Figures are often alone, whether swimming solo or driving along a mountain pass with no other cars in sight. Insects and animals are similar, although in pieces like “Negative attention,” we’re witness to the demise of the others, as a glinting spiderweb clings to a handful of colorful specimens.

Deep shadows and haze blanket the scenes, with small pockets of light offering only bits of insight into the full scope of the landscape. The enigmatic nature of Majic’s work also echoes that of his material choices: he utilizes the chalky marble dust to accentuate and define light, creating a twinkling effect with otherwise matte stone.

Majic is currently preparing for several group shows this summer, along with a book release with Nino Mier Gallery. Explore more of his work on Instagram.

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A fashionable bat, a melancholy sun, and a springtime spirit with seasonal allergies are just a few of the characters conceived by Cat Johnston. Drawing on childhood memories, folk art, and nature, the London-based illustrator and model maker creates expressive sculptures and puppets that inhabit dreamlike realms.

Invoking historical costumes and cartoonish and emotive faces, Johnston’s otherworldly cast seems both familiar and strange, as if children’s book protagonists have sprung to life or converged with a strange dream. Recent characters comprise a series of gods representing sunburn, hay fever, and insomnia, which also—rather inconveniently—are the sun, flowers, and the moon.

Johnston recently made her first short film in collaboration with stop-motion animator and fellow puppet-maker Joseph Wallace called “The Wickywock and the Jubjub Berry.” As a mythical woodland creature deals with a bout of sleeplessness, a forest sprite appears with what seems like a practical solution, but things don’t exactly go as planned.

Coinciding with a local pagan festival called the Hastings Traditional Jack in the Green, which occurs every first weekend of May, Johnston will have a small solo exhibition at a local pub called The Crown. In addition to signing on to work with London-based cinematic studio Passion Pictures as a director, the artist continues to explore the possibilities of film.

Johnston is currently working on a few ideas for animated series and hoping to develop a slightly longer format stop-motion project while also working on another short film, “which will be a mix of live action puppetry and stop-motion animation and will feature two flowery monsters and an extremely cute bee,” she says.

You might also enjoy the quirky Hieronymus Bosch-inspired figures of Roberto Benavidez.

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From the beaded phrases of Jeffrey Gibson’s sculptural weavings to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s canoe series to Raven Halfmoon’s fingerprint-textured tributes, a new exhibition marks the largest presentation of American Indigenous work in the U.K. to date.

Opening next week, Hold to This Earth at Yorkshire Sculpture Park features nearly 70 pieces by 38 artists, which in turn represent 35 Tribal Nations. “(The artists) reference and honour ancestral knowledge whilst being steadfastly contemporary, asserting a powerful presence and countering narratives of erasure that too often position Indigenous cultures only in terms of the past,” says a statement from Tia Collection, from which the pieces are drawn.

Colossal readers will recognize works by Cannupa Hanska Luger, Dyani White Hawk, Nicholas Galanin, and more. The range of media highlights the diverse materials and approaches that Indigenous contemporary artists use and nods to cultural traditions, heritage crafts, and precious landscapes while also considering socio-economic issues, visibility and representation, and technology.

“Materials such as clay, hide, wool, beads, and natural pigments become carriers of powerful stories, memory, and tradition, rooted in connection to the earth,” says Tia Collection. “Newer modes of expression and understanding growing out of digital culture also speak to the shifting landscapes of Indigenous life in the 21st century.”

Hold to This Earth opens on June 13 and continues through April 18, 2027, in Wakefield. Keep up with exhibitions featuring works from the Tia Collection on Instagram.

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From dusky woodland scenes to fantastical landscapes populated by mythical creatures, Shannon Taylor’s vibrant dioramas spring to life inside vintage cosmetic compacts. Sourced from flea markets, vintage shops, friends, and anywhere else they might appear, the vessels themselves are often brimming with character, but they let on little about what resides inside. Tiny mermaids, unicorns, and a range of flora and fauna made with watercolor on paper beckon us into a Polly Pocket-sized realm.

In addition to the inclusion of her work in Common Waters at Arch Enemy Arts, Taylor is preparing for a solo exhibition titled Minor Mending at Modern Eden in San Francisco, which opens on August 6. She also curated a show at the Oakland Museum of California titled Fairyland @ 75: A Legacy of Magic, organized on behalf of Children’s Fairyland, where she is Director of Art and Restoration. The show continues through the end of the summer. See more on Taylor’s Instagram.

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Throughout her illustrious 32-year career, Pacita Abad (1946-2004) traveled to more than 60 countries. Myriad experiences ultimately introduced her to a wide range of techniques, materials, and relationships, shaping the artist’s practice over time. Movement provided an enduring source of new ideas and inspiration, and as she put it, “For me, traveling is my art school.”

In the spring of 1998, Abad visited Yemen. At the time, the country was still in recovery following the Yemeni Civil War, which took place four years prior. Grounded in her rigorous political engagement and the instabilities experienced in her native Philippines, Abad reflected on the immutable significance of cultural practices and their value despite periods of upheaval.

“Rather than positioning herself within a nameable lineage of artistic influences who moved in conventional gallery spaces,” Tina Kim Gallery notes, “Abad instead favored the inheritance of historically anonymous workers in craft, textiles, and the decorative arts, from locations outside of established Western institutional and market infrastructure.” This quote appears in a statement for the New York gallery’s third solo exhibition of Abad’s works, titled Door to Life.

The presentation highlights a body of work Abad completed in subsequent years, which takes inspiration from Yemen’s vibrant, ornate displays of architecture and decoration. One particular focus was doors, which the gallery refers to as “portals.” Through countless photographs and numerous sketches of doorways she encountered on excursions, Abad created a prolific visual archive to take home and use as reference, adding “Everyday a new idea, everyday a new door.”

Crafted in her signature trapunto style, Abad’s vertical, rectangular compositions layer meaning, memories, and material. Painted and appliquéd geometric patterns on canvas call to decorative elements found in traditional Yemeni architecture, like tessellations and botanical motifs.

The artist’s series of never-before-seen qamariya paintings are evocative of the semicircular glass windows common in Sanaa, the nation’s capital—another key element of Yemen’s time-honored artisan practices. The Arabic term qamariya translates to “moon-like” or “of the moon,” echoing the glass structures’ half-moon shape and dynamic ability to transmit light.

Door to Life continues through June 20 at Tina Kim Gallery in New York. You can also flip through more works, which were previously compiled into a small publication that supplemented Abad’s initial Door to Life exhibition in 1999.

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“Matter is memory, and memory is a medium,” says artist Annalise Neil, whose surreal cyanotypes brim with animals, fungi, geological specimens, shells, and more that she augments with watercolor. Recently, the artist has been adding rich, earthy tones with natural dyes such as wild strawberry leaf, oak gall, loquat leaf, and chestnut. She has used botanical teas to shift the natural blue color of the cyanotypes for quite a while, but the sepia tonality has emerged as a larger focus lately, which allows her to layer hues like browns and purples.

Neil’s experiences in nature profoundly influence her individual pieces in a process that she poetically describes as “melting, rolling, pinching, sanding, walking across meadows, cheek on sun-warmed boulders.” This year, she’s a resident artist at Volcan Mountain Foundation in Julian, California, which merges artistic and scientific inquiry. “I endeavor to create work that will lead to contemplation and reflection and that invites a thoughtful examination of our relationship to reality and our surroundings,” she says.

“For my site-specific work, I begin by hiking for many days and photographing intriguing things I find, including birds and mammals, plants, geological forms, and insects,” she says. “As I photograph specimens in wild and cultivated spaces, I capture a brief version of their existence that I transmute into a negative and then into a cyanotype.” The images are then supported on hand-carved wooden panels.

Neil’s work is currently on view in shows in San Diego: Unfold Projects Exhibition 01: We Must Imagine It, presented in collaboration with ICA San Diego and continuing through August 2, and Organica: Flora to Fauna at The Granger Hotel in San Diego, curated by JFIN Collective, which continues through the end of the year. See more and follow updates on the artist’s Instagram.

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When we think of terms like “flowing” or “fluid,” we could be referring to the nature of water, but we can also just as easily apply these concepts to our understanding of art and craft. Fabrics “pool” and different mediums converge. The nature of creativity is often referred to in terms of an “ebb and flow.” Ecologically speaking, bodies of water are metaphorically woven into the fabric of our planet. Rivers and lakes sustain an abundance of life, shape cultures, and course through history. Amid the ongoing climate crisis, how do artists express concerns about water and the environment?

Water | Craft, a group exhibition at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum, dives into this question. The museum itself is situated on the banks of the Mississippi River and often directly engages with its expansive biological and cultural reach. Works by seven artists, whose practices incorporate weaving, pottery, basketry, glass, and textile arts, directly interface with contemporary issues of water access and cultural preservation amid climate change.

Colossal readers may be familiar with the mixed-media pieces of Tali Weinberg and Nicole McLaughlin, both of whom combine quantities of colorful thread with other materials in meditations on interconnectivity and multi-disciplinarity. Weinberg translates ecological data into tendril-like installations and abstract weavings, such as a series of three pieces from her Climate Datascapes series that visualize information about silt in the Upper Mississippi River. McLaughlin’s dramatically fringed ceramic platters reference Pre-Columbian cultures and the continuum of human history and time.

Water | Craft also includes works by Rowland Ricketts, Sarah Sense, Therman Statom, Kelly Church, and Tanya Aguiñiga. The latter is known for her intricately knotted wall works containing terracotta forms, which cascade gently to the floor. And Ricketts’ large-scale installation, “Bow,” comprises strands of indigo-dyed linen that suspend within a large gallery space, creating the effect of a current or perhaps the silhouette of a boat.

“Just as water flows through bodies, landscapes, and cultural histories, craft knowledge is passed between generations, carrying technical skills alongside cultural values,” the museum says. “The artists in Water | Craft employ traditional methods not as nostalgic gestures, but as living practices that continue to evolve in response to environmental change.”

Water | Craft continues through December 27 in Winona.

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For the 13th edition of Design Shanghai, Hu Yuehua presented a bold bouquet intersecting organic forms and human craft traditions. “Weaving Nature” is a large-scale composition of indigo and ochre leaves, blooms, and growths stitched together from dyed cotton and linen. Tightly nested in a wall-like garden, the individual pieces form a dense field of color and texture. Loose threads, raw edges, and tight rows of pleats radiate across the upright piece, merging evidence of the artist’s hand with the natural forms she depicts.

Design Shanghai concluded last week, but you can see more of the projects on display at the annual event on its website.

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