When Hannah Buechler was 13 years old, she spent hours in her mother’s garage, happily painting with her hands and making a mess. Even at this young age, she had already discovered her calling. “I realized then—and I still believe this to be true now—that making art was what I enjoyed most,” she says.

A multidisciplinary artist, Buechler received her bachelor’s degree in fibers from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). Now based in Los Angeles, she launched her eponymous studio to produce her signature tactile collages. She also explores how simplicity can blossom into complex layers as she makes rich textures from small, repetitive gestures.

As the daughter of a scientist, Buechler gives thoughtful consideration to the origins, properties, and possibilities of her materials. She has experimented with everything from resin to embroidery, and even makes her own textiles.

Buechler has loved fashion for as long as she can remember, and in 2021, she accepted a role at apparel company Libertine. As the brand’s senior designer, she specializes in patterns, screenprinting, and digital graphics.

Buechler is content to balance her 9-to-5 duties with her craft for now, but she envisions a future pivot. “I have always had a creative corporate job while continuing my studio practice,” she notes. “I have done my best to sell my work on my own, but I am hopeful I can make this my sole career.”

Today, Hannah Buechler joins us for Friday Five! Below, she shares five inspirations and five of her favorite projects.

Hannah Buechler’s 5 Inspirations

Ozzy Osbourne from the cover of ‘The Ultimate Sin’ painted on ‘Flight DL 7710: Embrace The Crash’ by Hannah Buechler. Photography by Julia Deptula.

1. Music

Music has always been a driving force and inspiration for my work. Often I create a piece and feel a song, where it may be the colors or patterns, and many times I name my pieces after song titles. I don’t shuffle my music, so when I listen to albums, I can hear the song transitions and understand the style behind each artist’s album. My taste is all over the place: I love heavy metal, rap, pop, rock, and indie. Today, I started my day listening to Electric Light Orchestra, then switched to Candlemass and Ariana Grande.

Photography courtesy of Hannah Buechler

2. Experimenting

Being an experimental artist has opened the door to continuous learning. I love blending processes with materials so much that I create my own textiles, including what I call my loom bands. Over the years, I have loved to experiment with resin, embroidery, and painting techniques. One of my favorite experimental projects—which I have yet to release—is called Freshman 25. As a freshman at SCAD, I collected chip bags and microwaved them. I have around 100 microwaved chip bags. Until I know how to mount them, I will only tell the world about them, but it has been a project deep in the back of my mind that I know I have to complete.

Photography courtesy of Hannah Buechler

3. Fashion

I have loved clothes since I knew how to dress myself. My parents both appreciated clothes and fashion, so I grew up watching how they dressed and always felt inspired to look good and feel good in clothes. I don’t think it surprises anyone who knows me that I’ve worked in fashion for the last five years as Libertine’s surface designer. Even when I was younger, I can remember being inspired by specific collections: Karl Lagerfeld collections with Chanel: Pre-Fall 2012 Paris-Bombay and Pre-Fall 2014 Paris-Dallas. All of Alexander McQueen’s work, from the theatrical sets to the clothes (No. 13 Paint Dress Finale, Spring/Summer 1999). Growing up, I loved feeling and seeing the colorful textiles in department stores, especially the Chanel tweeds.

Photography courtesy of Hannah Buechler

4. Collecting

I have always had a knack for collecting, as many people do. I have a white Panasonic VHS TV and love creating “tape towers” in corners of my room. My cigar boxes hold different materials: colored pencils, colored pencil shavings, pens, paint scraps, resin scraps, etc. One of the first things I started collecting as a kid was vinyl after being gifted The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, as well as The Rolling Stones’ Undercover. My newest obsession is Kieselstein-Cord handbags, a brand that is niche and ornate, with gold, animalistic details like crocodile feet on the bottom of a handbag.

Photography courtesy of Hannah Buechler

5. My dog, Stevie

Stevie, aka Steve, is my 9-year-old Boston Terrier child. She has lived with me all over the world, from Savannah to Paris and San Diego to New York, and now in Los Angeles. She has traveled to South America and all over the United States with me, being the best and easiest travel companion despite her stubborn personality. She is the strangest, quirkiest dog and incredibly bright yet silly at the same time. She has a funny way of understanding the materials I am working with and what she can step on. She will effortlessly walk around a painting or wet substrate on the ground but will also walk and sit on my loom band pieces.

5 Projects by Hannah Buechler

‘Cosmos’ by Hannah Buechler; 2022–2025, beads, broken jewelry, safety pins, glass, paint, resin, and recycled fabrics on panel. Photography by Spencer Higgins.

1. Satellite Series: Cosmos

Cosmos was the culmination of saved project experiments from college, extensive beading with broken jewelry, and themes of deconstruction and reconstruction, resulting in a large (63 x 48 inches) free-standing artwork that can also be wall-mounted.

I started this piece when I was sick and quarantined with COVID. I had never watched Euphoria before, so I binge-watched two seasons and beaded from my room with no idea how large this piece would become.

Over the four years I spent working on Cosmos, it transformed from a small, beaded textile into an endless artwork full of experiments, including embedded loose material under mesh layers, chain woven between rows of safety pins, and pieces of a beaded, broken vase dipped in resin. Creating Cosmos has made me think of the possibilities of making other time capsule pieces for others. I imagine someone who doesn’t want to throw out certain textiles, materials, or jewelry they may have.

I do look at this piece every day, though, and think about adding to it. I am starting to see shapes form the more I look at it, which makes me want to play off of that and create something more representational.

‘Palisade’ by Hannah Buechler; 2025, loom bands, wool, and felt framed. Photography by Spencer Higgins.

2. Palisade

Palisade was the product of staying hunkered down during the 2025 Los Angeles fires. I needed to create something in order to cope with the disasters around us.

The composition was inspired by my drive home the day the fires started, as I watched the flames rise off the mountains beneath the Getty. Growing up in San Diego, I will never forget some of the times we had to evacuate during fires. I grew up in a town that is filled with Eucalyptus trees, which always pose a threat. I will never forget the grayish-black, thick skies, often with a hint of yellow and orange depending on how close you were to the fire. With Palisade, I wanted to emphasize black, grays, and white, with bright, striking hues. Creating a little moment in the bottom right corner symbolized the drastic color change from before and after the fire.

At the time, my partner and I decided to stay in LA—despite living on the base of the Santa Monica Mountains. We were racking our brains over how to get our work out of our home (my partner is a fashion designer who makes custom clothes for rock ‘n’ rollers like Billy Idol). My family offered to drive up to help move some of the things that we couldn’t bear to part with. When thinking about leaving some of my larger pieces behind—like Cosmos, which was still a work in progress then—I decided to stay. Staying gave me the opportunity to create Palisade, creating something that symbolized a moment in time.

‘Alaska’ by Hannah Buechler; 2022, beads, safety pins, fishing beads, indicators, fishing line, and flatbed crystals. Photography courtesy of Buechler.

3. Alaska

This project brought many challenges; however, the outcome was better than I had hoped. I was commissioned by a woman whose husband caught the fish that is printed on the fabric substrate. The Japanese technique of Gyotaku lets you create an exact, lifelike record of a catch before selling or eating the fish.

Coincidentally, I took this project on a fly-fishing trip to Alaska with my family. It wasn’t until this trip that I really started to see the correlations between fly-fishing and beading. More than just the materials I work with, including fishing line, lures, and flies, beading and fishing are both very patient processes.

The commission took 11 months to complete, and when framed, I wanted to show the extensive beading on the backside of the textile, so I had a piece of plexiglass laser-cut with holes around the edge. This let me use fishing line to sew the fabric into the base of the frame. To secure the line, I added fishing lures/beads to hold the fabric in place.

Contemplation’ by Hannah Buechler; 2025, loom bands, wool, and felt framed. Photography by Spencer Higgins.

4. Contemplation/The Weight of Memory

As the daughter of a biochemist, I think I was inherently fascinated with the human body and anatomy. We grew up with a real human skeleton in our home, named Walter, who probably should have scared me as a kid, but I found the body to be a source of inspiration. Growing up with Walter, I always found a way of tying anatomy back into my work. My first body of work was when I was 17 and in high school. It featured different parts of the body, using different techniques in each piece.

‘The Weight of Memory’ by Hannah Buechler; 2025, loom bands, wool, and felt framed. Photography by Spencer Higgins.

These two pieces were my way of adding representation of the body into my loom band work. These pieces brought many challenges, including letting go of the “freestyle” aspect of creating my loom band pieces. I had to plan and redraw the faces a lot, which was the opposite of how I approach my other works, which tend to be more fluid.

‘Wild Like West Texas Winds’ by Hannah Buechler; 2019, gouache on canvas. Photography courtesy of Buechler.

5. Wild Like the West Texas Winds

In many ways, painting has always been a way for me to be more expressive and representational in my compositions and processes. As I tend to allow color, line, and texture to drive my loom band pieces, my paintings give me a moment to reflect on gradients, repetitive patterns like stripes, camo, and animal prints, flora and fauna. Even though I completed this piece in 2019, it still remains one of my favorite paintings because of the time I had to make it.

The name Wild Like the West Texas Winds came from one of my grandpa’s many quotes he used to describe me. When I painted this piece, my grandpa had just been admitted to a nursing home. I would go to work every day, visit my grandpa, and then come home to paint; this piece was one I became obsessed with coming home to.

I have tried to create paintings similar to this one, but they end up being too chaotic. WLTWTW will always be special to me in many ways.

Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF has made a practice of turning familiar objects into something stranger, whether that means blowing a cartoonish red boot up to near-comical proportions or shrinking a handbag to microscopic scale. For its latest experiment in distortion, MSCHF has chosen a considerably larger subject: two Lexus vehicles.

Photography by Matt Hartz for Lexus

Commissioned by Lexus for MOTOMORPHOSIS, a new exhibition opening during New York’s Armory Week, MSCHF transformed a Lexus RZ 450e and RX 450h+ into a pair of automotive sculptures that look less fabricated than digitally manipulated. Each appears alongside its production counterpart, making the extent of the transformations immediately apparent.
The RZ 450e becomes Circle Car, its body stretched and curved until the front and rear meet in a continuous loop. The RX 450h+ undergoes a different kind of contortion in Twisted Car, where the vehicle rotates dramatically along its length, pulling its windows, doors, and body lines into a spiral.

Photography by Matt Hartz for Lexus

While both might resemble concept cars from an especially surreal auto show, MSCHF calls them “Form Cars.” The distinction flips the conventional concept-car exercise on its head: rather than using an experimental vehicle to explore future technology or functionality, the collective treats the existing automobile primarily as a form to be manipulated.

Photography by Fritz Metayer for MSCHF

That approach draws from the digital tools designers routinely use. Operations like stretching, bending, and twisting an object are relatively mundane inside 3D software, even when they produce geometries that would be absurd in the physical world. MSCHF also points to the “squash and stretch” of 3D animation, where forms distort through smear frames to communicate action. MOTOMORPHOSIS effectively freezes that visual shorthand and gives it physical mass.

Photography by Fritz Metayer for MSCHF

Exhibiting the sculptures beside intact versions of the vehicles reinforces the contradiction. One object is carefully engineered to move through physical space; its distorted double is completely static, yet visually communicates movement more emphatically.

Photography by Fritz Metayer for MSCHF

“Most conversations about electrification focus on how a vehicle is powered. MOTOMORPHOSIS asks a different question: What can electricity power in our imagination?” says Lisa McQueen, senior manager of Lexus marketing. “Working with MSCHF allowed us to take the automobile beyond its familiar form and explore movement, transformation and possibility in an entirely new way.”

Photography by Fritz Metayer for MSCHF

MOTOMORPHOSIS is on view at Chelsea Industrial in New York until Sept. 26, 2026.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

As part of each Maison&Objet, the twice-annual design show on the outskirts of Paris, a selected group of Rising Talent from a single country presents their work as a show within the show. For visitors—buyers, journalists, architects, and interior designers—it offers a more focused look at emerging design amid the fair’s broader (and often overwhelming) presentations.

This year, the spotlight was on South Africa, with seven designers and studios bringing together the country’s distinctive mix of craft, cultural heritage, and contemporary design. Representing Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, and beyond, the group presented furniture, rugs, lighting, and decorative objects shaped by architectural rigor, family history, curiosity, and even environmental activism.

7 Rising Talent Award Winners at Maison&Objet 2026

These seven designers and studios offer a glimpse at what’s emerging from South Africa’s design scene right now.

Oageng Manana & Tshegofatso Ramothibe of Meetlo Studio

Johannesburg

Photography by Matlhatsi Mogalanyane

Meetlo Studio takes familiar objects—a wine rack, a server—and gives them new forms rooted in South African culture and tradition. “We try to express our work through our African narrative and our cultural customs,” Manana explains. “Our name means ‘customs and traditions.’ So our inspiration is drawn from how our indigenous people used to do things, and also the environment that is around us.”

Meetlo Studio at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.

One example is the Abadimu server, whose name means “for the ancestors.” Manana says his ancestors are a source of wisdom and inspiration, but function remains central to the studio’s work, even when a piece incorporates elaborate carving or unexpected forms.

Everything, including the carving, is done in-house, giving the studio greater control over how those ideas take shape.“We can control the narrative and have that uniqueness to it,” he says. “We can translate our story exactly as we want to envision it.”

Ashleigh Lloyd of Studio Lloyd

Cape Town

Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion

For Maison&Object 2026, Studio Lloyd presented a new line of smaller, more residential-focused pieces. Ashleigh Lloyd is better known for large-scale, high-impact work for hospitality spaces, including lodges and resorts. Her sculptural seating and lighting are made from aluminum, stainless steel, and synthetic rope that is UV-protected, weather-resistant, and built to last. Now, she’s looking toward the residential market with limited-edition table and pendant lamps.

Studio Lloyd at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.

Lloyd believes in supporting and empowering women, sharing knowledge, and cultivating a strong sense of community through her creative process. Her designs use a crochet-based technique, typically thought of as “women’s work,” to create sculptural forms from rope.

“Crochet, through its natural flexibility, tactile quality, and almost meditative rhythm, offers a deeply human counterpoint to the rigidity of architectural lighting,” Lloyd says.

Simphiwe Mlambo

Cape Town

Photography courtesy of Maison&Objet

An interior design graduate of the Durban University of Technology, Simphiwe Mlambo has worked in residential, commercial, and hospitality projects since founding his studio in 2019. A Durban native with family ties to the construction industry, Mlambo considers his life experience central to an approach that balances conceptual thinking with technical knowledge.

Simphiwe Mlambo at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.

The collection he showed at Maison drew inspiration from the grass mats his grandmother made. A bench evokes her loom, while wall panels reference the mats themselves and lamps recall the light she used while weaving.

“The whole idea is to take personal experiences and traditional techniques and translate them into a modern context,” Mlambo explains. That extends to the collection’s largely traditional color palette, which he adapted for a contemporary audience. “But it still has that texture,” he adds. “It still has that African-ness. It still has that feeling of home for me, of course.”

Tanisha Neill of NISH

Cape Town

Photography courtesy of NISH

Tanisha Neill began as a dancer, a background that ultimately informs her relationship to space and her sense of rhythm and perspective in her designs through her studio, NISH. “My material definitely drives my design, and understanding the capabilities and sometimes its restrictions is where the beauty of creation and my ideas come from,” she explains.

NISH at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.

For a new rug that can also be displayed as a wall hanging, Neill collaborated with a collage artist who works by tearing and layering images from vintage magazines. The final form wasn’t predetermined—Neill initially thought the design might become a textile, but once she saw the finished collage, she knew it should be a rug. Hand-tufted in wool and silk, the piece uses varying pile heights to recreate the collage’s sense of depth and layering, with a mountain landscape and bird imagery emerging across its surface.

Neill describes that willingness to let the material influence the outcome as part of her process: “You see the prototype, then you get it back, and you have to be open to adapting, to letting the piece kind of bring itself to life.”

Martin Tallie & Zani Alberts of DEFT Studios

Port Elizabeth (Eastern Cape)

Photography courtesy of DEFT Studios

Like many creatives, Martin Tallie and Zani Alberts, the pair behind DEFT Studios, pivoted during the COVID pandemic: They began as architects and ended up as furniture designers. “A lot of our influences were stolen from architecture, and we were self-taught in woodworking,” Tallie explains. “Our unique vantage point is that we didn’t have a mentor teaching his ways onto us.”

DEFT Studios at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.

That architectural influence can be seen in the studio’s interest in simple forms and pure geometries, though the making itself can be quite intricate, combining traditional and contemporary techniques. The Étagère brune et claire, shown at Maison&Objet, exemplifies their desire to create singular pieces with lasting value. Tallie and Alberts produce everything in-house with a small team, maintaining control over both the quality of the work and how it takes shape.

“We love working with our hands,” Tallie says. “We are designers, but we are definitely makers.”

Karlien van Rooyen

Cape Town

Photography courtesy of Karlien van Rooyen

With a background in neuroscience and a love of free diving, Karlien van Rooyen creates objects inspired by anatomy and the organic forms she finds underwater. “Some of them look like lungs or neurons from the brain, but they also look like mushrooms or coral at the same time,” van Rooyen explains.

Karlien van Rooyen at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Anne Emmanuelle Thion.

Each ceramic piece is hand-built from stoneware clay, glazed, and fired, while her wooden works are created in collaboration with a woodworker. Van Rooyen begins with a 2D sketch, which is then translated into three dimensions and carved from African teak, a hardwood that bleeds red when fresh.

“Multiple pieces of this hardwood get fused together, and then the large chunks are carved away,” she says. “It looks almost like a brutalist monument.”

Siyanda Mbele of Pinda Interior Design

Durban

Photography by Sinomtho Msweli

A background in engineering and later design led Siyanda Mbele to form Pinda Interior Design. He drew the studio name from the isiZulu word phinda, meaning “again,” a reference to the repetition and rhythm at the core of his creative approach. His work draws from South African Nguni, Zulu, and Ndebele cultures, with pattern informing the shape of each piece and vice versa.

Pinda Interior Design at Maison&Objet, September 2026. Photography by Francis Amiand.

That relationship comes through in the wall hanging/rug Mbele showed at Maison&Objet, which uses a pattern of diamonds and triangles drawn from Zulu culture.

Of this imagery, Mbele explains: “The triangle is masculine; the diamond is feminine. When married, the symbols will be stacked. The shapes are made into beaded bracelets, and a woman will give one to a suitor she is interested in. He will wear the bracelet to prove he accepts and wants to spend his life with her.”

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The 2026 Rising Talent Awards jury included Alan Hayward and Garreth Van Niekerk, co-artistic directors of Decorex Africa and 100% Design Africa; interior architect, design researcher, and academic Juliet Kavishe; furniture and lighting designer Thabisa Mjo; and interior designer Donald Nxumalo, who served as creative director of Design Joburg in 2020. The South African edition of the Rising Talent Awards was presented through a new collaboration between Maison&Objet and Decorex Africa.

Bvlgari’s serpent has spent decades wrapped around wrists, fingers, and necks. Now, it’s winding its way through the New York City landscape.

Opening Sept. 10 on the High Line, auruBOROS – Urban Memory and Collective Dream is Bvlgari’s first public art installation in the United States. Commissioned as part of the house’s ongoing Serpenti Infinito project, the work was conceived by Berlin-based artists Marco Canevacci and Yena Young of Plastique Fantastique.

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

The duo is known for pneumatic installations that use air to create immersive, often surreal additions to existing architecture. For auruBOROS, that approach takes the form of enormous golden coils that appear to emerge from beneath The Standard hotel before moving into the elevated landscape of the High Line. The effect falls somewhere between sculpture and architecture: a gleaming foreign object inserted into the familiar infrastructure of Manhattan.

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

“auruBOROS began with the ancient image of the ouroboros, but instead of keeping the serpent as a closed circle, we opened it and allowed it to enter the city,” Canevacci and Young tell Design Milk. “Its gold, reflective body moves through the High Line, absorbing buildings, vegetation, people, weather, light, and sky into its surface.”

That reflective surface means that the sculpture changes continually with its surroundings: Buildings and greenery mingle with passing visitors, while shifts in weather and daylight alter the work throughout the day.

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

Despite its imposing scale and seemingly solid presence, auruBOROS will exist on the High Line for just 11 days. “Although it appears monumental, the entire structure exists through air and is temporary,” the artists explain. “We were interested in that contradiction: something that looks precious and permanent but is actually light, fragile, and transient.”

Photography courtesy of BVLGARI

auruBOROS – Urban Memory and Collective Dream is on view Sept. 10–20 on the High Line at Little West 12th Street in New York City. Alongside the installation, Bvlgari is debuting three Serpenti Tubogas high-jewelry pieces and an exclusive minaudière inspired by New York’s artistic history, all available at select boutiques this month.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

For a dog whose everyday wardrobe consists of little more than a red collar, Snoopy has developed a surprisingly impressive fashion résumé. Over the decades, designers including Chanel, Hermès, Dior, Armani, and Givenchy have dressed the Peanuts character, with some of those creations appearing in a 1990 exhibition at the Louvre in Paris. Now, a new generation of designers is getting its turn.

Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide

Opening Sept. 2 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, Snoopy in Style NYC brings together archival fashion, new designer commissions, and installations exploring the Peanuts character’s influence across fashion, sports, music, and popular culture. The 16,000-square-foot exhibition follows a previous presentation in Paris, but expands the concept for New York with 10 immersive zones curated by The Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center.

Snoopy and Woodstock designs by BODE. Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide.

Fashion is at the center of the exhibition, with BODE, Christopher John Rogers, Coach, Collina Strada, GAPStudio designed by Zac Posen, Kith, Levi’s, LUAR, Sandy Liang, and others creating new looks for Snoopy and Woodstock.

Snoopy and Woodstock clothing designed by STAPLE. Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide.

“They all have a way of interpreting looks for him that display some semblance of their own taste, but give Snoopy the personality and style he deserves,” explains Melissa Menta, SVP of global brand and communications at Peanuts, adding that the designers were given complete freedom in their interpretations.

Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide

By placing archival pieces alongside the new commissions, Snoopy in Style NYC also creates a timeline of sorts, showing how different generations of designers have interpreted the same deceptively simple character.

“Snoopy is the only character who can claim a decades-long relationship with designers dating back to the early ’80s,” Menta says. “It’s been incredible to see designers embrace designing for Snoopy and see how they make him ‘their own’ with their designs.”

Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide

That adaptability may have something to do with Snoopy’s original design. Charles M. Schulz gave him relatively few visual ingredients to work with: a white body, black ears and nose, and an economical hand-drawn line. What Snoopy lacks in visual complexity, however, he makes up for in personality.

“What I think is really at the heart of it for designers is the simple art and beauty of Charles Schulz’s line,” Menta explains. “That, coupled with the multi-faceted personality of Snoopy, makes it easy for designers to want to make their own mark.”

Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide

Beyond fashion, the exhibition features a dedicated tennis installation that explores Schulz’s relationship to the sport, including his friendship with Billie Jean King and his advocacy for Title IX and the Women’s Sports Foundation. Joe Cool’s Listening Lounge turns to another part of Peanuts history, celebrating the music of Vince Guaraldi through a DJ booth, rare albums, archival material, and music-inspired merchandise. The New York edition also highlights the comic strip’s link to the city, including the fact that the newspaper syndicate that originally debuted Peanuts was based there.

Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide

For a character first drawn in 1950, Snoopy has proved unusually capable of moving between mediums and generations without requiring much reinvention. His costumes change, as do the designers dressing him and the cultural worlds surrounding him, but that spare silhouette remains instantly recognizable.

Designs by Christopher John Rogers. Courtesy of Peanuts Worldwide.

Snoopy in Style NYC is on view at 25 Little West 12th Street in New York City until Sept. 26.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

With tiny unicorns, rocking horses, shrimp, skulls, lips, and sneakers, Cj Hendry’s newest exhibition is a mélange of roughly a million pastel beads that reference the artist’s visual world. On view at Salon 94 Design on New York’s Upper East Side from August 6-16, the aptly named Pastel invites visitors to interact with the art by reaching (or diving?) into a vast, swimming pool-sized pit of chunky plastic beads.

Photography by Alexis Salas

The impetus for this exhibit was the beading room at Space Club, an indoor children’s play space in Brooklyn, which has a long jewelry-making table with trays of beads. Hendry witnessed children—and adults—throwing themselves into the trays to touch and feel the beads and search for treasures. She decided to make the bead “tray” more accessible by expanding it to approximately 20 by 30 feet and more than two feet deep.

“When I think about it, all of my exhibitions do have a very childlike, play element to them because that’s always where my head goes,” the artist says.

Photography by Alexis Salas

Donning Cj Hendry–branded socks, Pastel visitors can wade through the beads and string together a bracelet or necklace or simply find beads to keep as a souvenir. Beads cost $1 each (or $50 for a canister of 75).

“I bet Salon 94 has never sold art for a dollar,” Hendry quips.

Photography by Alexis Salas

An Instagram sensation with close to a million followers (and counting), Hendry has attracted an alt-audience that might not be the typical gallery-going crowd. “What we’re building with Pastel should not be in Salon 94,” she says. “My world… as an ‘artist’ and Salon 94 as this proper, mega, real gallery colliding is just absurd.” But that’s part of the reason why the renowned gallery struck her as an ideal location for this installation.

Photography by Alexis Salas

“Salon 94 Design understands the importance of experimentation and audience connection,” she says. “This exhibition creates a bridge between the world I’ve built and a more traditional gallery context.”

Beyond the bead pit—Pastel’s centerpiece, occupying the entire first floor of the gallery—visitors can also view Hendry’s signature photorealistic drawings and sculptures upstairs.

Photography by Alexis Salas

Pastel is on view until Aug. 16 at Salon 94 Design, 3 E. 89th St. in New York City. The gallery is open daily from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Collectible edition prints featuring the exhibition’s 24 hyper-realistic drawings will be sold on cjhendrystudio.com on Aug. 9 at 7 p.m. ET.

The sky fades into a pink sunset as Lido Pimienta, the Grammy-nominated Colombian Canadian singer-songwriter, belts over the sweeping accompaniment of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra. The air feels lighter now that the rain has stopped just in time for the annual Concert in the Garden. At the Royal Botanical Gardens (RBG) in Burlington, Ontario, about an hour west of Toronto, the musical is expansive, the gardens lush, and just beyond the audience, Ken Kelleher’s newly installed Anchorball: A Curious Art Journey is on view.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

Alongside its responsibilities in horticulture, conservation, and research, RBG has increasingly embraced its role as an institution that brings people together through art, music, and shared public experiences. As Zahra Noorani, RBG director of business development, explains, these streams don’t always need to overlap—even though in this case, they do. “Sometimes they intersect, and sometimes they simply coexist,” she says.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

Officially established in 1941, the garden traces its origins to conservation efforts in the western end of Lake Ontario in the late 1920s. Today, the organization encompasses more than 2,400 acres of nature sanctuaries and cultivated gardens, making it Canada’s largest botanical garden.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

Looking ahead, leadership has become increasingly intentional about broadening the audience that “sees RBG as a place for them” through outdoor art, wellness programming, seasonal festivals, and thoughtfully curated cultural experiences—like Anchorball. The exhibition marks the first Canadian presentation by American artist Ken Kelleher, who has designed a series of storied and personalized characters as monumental sculptures created especially for the garden setting.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

Curated by RBG’s cultural program development lead, Jeremy Freiburger, Anchorball comprises 18 monumental sculptures—some stretching 12 feet high—distributed throughout the gardens alongside an integrated augmented reality experience. The exhibition unfolds as a walking journey, encouraging visitors to navigate the site differently as sculpture, landscape, and digital media overlap.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

The gardens themselves informed many of Kelleher’s site-specific interventions. In the Sustainable Rose Garden, the sculptures emerge from carefully composed companion plantings, while elsewhere, brightly colored forms frame long vistas or appear unexpectedly between mature trees. The characters range from cartoonish, bunny-like creatures to serene women’s faces peeking through coiffures of flowers, as well as more minimalist individual blooms with curved, monolithic stems.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

These characters were modeled digitally in 3D alongside the production of their fiberglass counterparts. The accompanying augmented reality layer introduces animated digital works that can only be activated on site, resulting in a dialogue between the physical landscape and virtual space. In this way, the exhibition encourages visitors to slow down, look more closely—and maybe even smell the roses.

Photography courtesy of Royal Botanical Gardens

For Noorani, the show has also become a test case for how the institution approaches ambitious cultural projects. “Anchorball has definitely stretched us, but in the best way,” she shares. “Bringing an exhibition like this to life meant learning how to work in new ways, building relationships with artists and creative partners, and finding ways for teams across the organization to bring their expertise together. Every project teaches us something, and this one has given us a lot of confidence in what we’re capable of taking on.”

For many public artworks, permanence is the exception rather than the rule. Jen Lewin’s The Ursas, however, has made the uncommon leap from the ephemeral landscape of Burning Man to a permanent installation along Brooklyn’s evolving Gowanus waterfront, where the monumental sculptures now anchor a newly accessible stretch of the canal.

‘The Ursas’ were installed at their new home along the Gowanus Canal on Aug. 1. Photography by Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for Charney Companies and Tavros.

Installed at Nevins Landing on Aug. 1, the paired sculptures occupy a prominent position between the residential towers and the canal. The development, designed by Fogarty Finger with waterfront landscape architecture by Field Operations, is part of the larger Gowanus Wharf campus. The project adds a new public landmark to a neighborhood undergoing dramatic physical and cultural transformation, as former industrial sites are increasingly giving way to housing, parks, and civic spaces.

Photography by Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for Charney Companies and Tavros

Inspired by the Ursa Major and Ursa Minor constellations, The Ursas explores ideas of navigation, orientation, and environmental stewardship. The larger of the two works, Ursa Major, rises 30 feet and is constructed from reclaimed ocean plastic originally sourced from Lewin’s 2022 installation The Last Ocean. Visitors can step inside the sculpture, where an infinity-mirrored chamber contains hand-drawn illustrations of species listed as extinct or presumed extinct on the IUCN Red List. Beside it, the 13-foot-tall Ursa Minor is clad in infinity mirrors and programmable LED lighting that creates an ever-shifting sense of depth and reflection.

Photography by Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for Charney Companies and Tavros

“The Ursas grew out of my research into the melting Ross Ice Shelf while developing The Last Ocean,” Lewin says. “What began as scientific inquiry became a personal reckoning with the scale and speed of environmental change.”

Lewin describes Ursa Minor as “a beacon” seeking the North Star, while Ursa Major carries illustrations honoring recently extinct species. “Together, the works hold two realities at once: grief and responsibility, but also direction,” she explains. “They ask us not only to reflect, but to decide how we move forward.”

Photography by Diane Bondareff/AP Content Services for Charney Companies and Tavros

The installation also marks a notable moment for Gowanus, where public art is increasingly being positioned as part of broader neighborhood redevelopment rather than an afterthought. The Ursas become one of the first permanent artworks to define the identity of the four-building Gowanus Wharf campus. (The project—which will ultimately introduce more than 2,200 residential units along the waterfront—is being developed by Tavros Holdings in partnership with Charney Companies.)

Before arriving at their new home, the sculptures made a dramatic journey across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge before being hoisted over Brooklyn’s Union Street Bridge and lowered into place along the canal. What began as a temporary installation in the Nevada desert in 2023 is now part of the everyday fabric of the city.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

Public art is meant to be observed, but Sharmistha Ray’s latest commission invites people to actually step into the composition. At Pittsburgh’s new Arts Landing civic space, the artist has transformed a pair of pickleball courts into a colorful geometric mural that doubles as a fully playable surface. Each match becomes part of the artwork itself.

Photography by Ross Ribblett; courtesy Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

Titled Geometry of Play, the installation marks Pittsburgh’s first artist-designed pickleball courts and joins seven other public art commissions at Arts Landing, a new gathering space developed by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. The boundaries of the court serve as the foundation for an abstract composition, which was inspired by the visual logic of historic game boards.

Drawing from board games such as the Indian game Pachisi (later adapted into Parcheesi in the United States), the mural layers interlocking circles, triangles, grids, and pathways into a kaleidoscopic composition. The design spans the full ROYGBIV color spectrum; the rainbow reference serves as a symbol of inclusion while encouraging shifting visual relationships as players move across the surface.

Guests play pickleball at the unveiling of ‘Geometry of Play.’ Photography by Chris Uhren; courtesy of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust.

Geometry of Play changes as the courts are used. The movement of players activates the design, reinforcing pickleball’s reputation as an accessible, social sport while transforming the courts into a shared civic space for recreation and gathering.

The commission continues Ray’s interdisciplinary practice, which spans painting, installation, and public art. Born in Kolkata and raised in Kuwait before moving to the United States, the artist frequently draws from South Asian visual traditions while exploring themes of identity, belonging, and cultural exchange through geometric abstraction.

Photography by Chris Uhren; courtesy of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

Ray’s recent projects include a large-scale installation at Grand Central Terminal, a commission for Pittsburgh International Airport’s new terminal, and animated works created with an original score by Grammy Award-winning musician Arooj Aftab.

Designed by landscape architecture firm Field Operations, the $31 million Arts Landing development brings together public art, performance, recreation, and community programming in Pittsburgh’s Cultural District. Geometry of Play joins installations by artists including Vanessa German, Thaddeus Mosley, Shikeith, Mikael Owunna and Marques Redd, Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis, Darian Johnson, and John Peña, with the inaugural commissions remaining on view for at least one year.

Photography by Ross Ribblett; courtesy of Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

Arts Landing is free and open to the public daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

Price Latimer grew up in Texas and lived just a few doors down from the Amarillo Museum of Art. With pieces by Georgia O’Keeffe, Larry Bell, and Louise Nevelson, the museum was a place that shaped her aesthetic sensibility. “Both of my grandmothers would frequently wheel me over in my pram before I could walk, and let me stare for what felt like hours at the permanent collection there,” she says.

Latimer received a bachelor’s degree from Rhode Island School of Design, where she immersed herself in the study of art. While in New York City, she worked for neo-conceptual artist Peter Halley and contributed to his magazine, Index, where she brought her own creative touch to the pages.

After moving to Los Angeles, she worked at local galleries before joining Italian furniture manufacturer Kartell, where she consulted with architects and interior designers to furnish spaces ranging from offices to large-scale hotels. She later co-founded Pizzanista!, a pizza restaurant, and served as its chief creative officer.

Ever the entrepreneur, Latimer co-founded Alkemis Paint in 2021 with Maya Crowne. The company’s all-natural interior paint is formulated with clear quartz paired with proprietary mixes of pigments and minerals.

When Latimer is not focused on day-to-day business, surrounded by color, she can probably be found on a flight headed to an exotic locale. “Exploring the far corners of the globe is one of my great passions, and I’ve been at it for as long as I can remember,” she says. “I relish finding those offbeat, weird hidden gems.”

Today, Price Latimer joins us for Friday Five!

Photography by Price Latimer

1. Leigh Bowery at The Tate Modern

Leigh Bowery lived fast, loud, and without apology, and he is hands down one of my all-time favorite creators. He truly blurs the lines between art and life. In a career that defied every attempt at categorization, Bowery twirled between performer, model, designer, musician, club promoter, and cultural provocateur, treating each identity not as a label but as a new frontier. Emerging from the electric chaos of 1980s London nightlife, he weaponized clothing and makeup as sculpture, turned his body into a constantly evolving canvas, and pushed the limits of aesthetics, sexuality, and gender. This incredibly comprehensive, immersive exhibition at the Tate Modern brought together his iconic “Looks” and his collaborations with Lucian Freud, Nick Knight, Michael Clark, and more, while pulling back the curtain on the creative underground through the eyes of the friends, freaks, and fellow visionaries.

Photography by Price Latimer

2. Palo Duro Canyon

I grew up in the Texas Panhandle, not far from Palo Duro Canyon, one of the most underrated natural wonders in the United States. It’s the second-largest canyon in the country behind the Grand Canyon, and hardly anyone knows about it! Roughly 25 to 40 miles long with an average width of 6 miles, it reaches up to 20 miles wide in places. Millennia of water erosion have shaped its geological formations, including caves and hoodoos (which inspired Alkemis Paint color number 53). The stunning color striations of oxidized red, maroon, grey, yellow, cream, and lavender are formed by layers of siltstone, shale, gypsum, evaporite, opal, caliche, and sandstone. Inhabited by humans for 10,000–15,000 years, it is deeply tied to the history of the Comanches, serving as a historic stronghold for the Quahadi band. Georgia O’Keeffe also painted the canyon between 1916 and 1918, when she was an art instructor at a nearby college, prior to her move to New Mexico.

Photography by Price Latimer

3. The Lightning Field by Walter de Maria

I was honored and fortunate to visit the incomparable land art work The Lightning Field by Walter de Maria (commissioned by Dia Art Foundation in 1977) in southern New Mexico a few years back with a handful of friends. It consists of 400 stainless steel poles with solid, pointed tips arranged in a rectangular 1-mile by 1-kilometer grid. De Maria scoured the Southwest for over five years before settling on this stunning site. Although photography of the artwork itself isn’t permitted, I’m sharing a photograph of the landscape. You’re dropped off at a remote homestead cabin in the high desert outside of Quemado, New Mexico. The vistas are colossal, and you can see for what feels like an eternity in every direction. Sitting down for sunset, we arranged ourselves in a semicircle looking out toward the horizon, watching the sun dip below the mountains. We collectively shared a meditative moment, and when we opened our eyes, there was literally a half-circle of rabbits in a mirrored formation, looking back at us. Unforgettable… as were the night skies!

Photography by Price Latimer

4. Scuba Diving

I’ve been scuba diving since I was in my early teens, and I am completely obsessed. It is one of the most unbelievable and surreal feelings to enter this completely magical alternate reality, a veritable underwater kingdom. It goes without saying that I’m a huge proponent of ocean conservation (one of the underlying tenets of Alkemis Paint’s mission to keep harmful petrochemical-based paint out of our oceans and waterways). Being able to temporarily experience the unique, kaleidoscopic sea creatures, coral, reefs, and underwater landscapes up close makes it all the more poignant and urgent that we must protect, defend, and preserve this fragile and irreplaceable ecosystem.

Photography by Price Latimer

5. Yoko Ono’s Cleaning Piece III

From Yoko Ono’s collected book called Acorn, which contains 100 brief thought experiments. I think this is pretty self-explanatory and is a beautiful mantra on how to live a more compassionate, kind and empathetic life. Yoko has been an intrepid force in art and music throughout her 60-plus-year career.

Works by Alkemis

Photography courtesy of RISD Museum

1. RISD Museum

Because it’s my alma mater, it’s such an honor to participate in anything related to Rhode Island School of Design. It holds the future of the best creative minds and is constantly pushing the envelope of innovative design, so we were thrilled to collaborate on the paint palette for the Liz Collins: Motherlode exhibition, celebrating the work of the queer feminist artist known for her bold abstract patterns, inventive use of materials, and radical experiments with fiber.

Photography by Joyce Billett

2. Design Miami

Our favorite art fair of all time, and a dream come true to be part of it these last three years. It was the very first palpable thing we manifested when we started this business together, so seeing it come true never stops feeling like a pinch-me moment. We worked closely with the team to develop custom and handpicked paint palettes to colorfully complement and harmonize the curatorial narrative.

Photography by Logan Jackson

3. Objects USA

This gradient was out of control (shout out to muralist Nick Kuszyk for executing this)! It took what was displayed to a whole new level, accentuating nearly 100 works by 55 artists, designers, and studios from across the US. The exhibition walls were painted with Alkemis Paint in a curated color palette developed in conjunction with R & Company, using meticulous gradient decorative painting techniques as a deliberate antidote to the customary white box, setting the atmosphere with vibrant visual innuendo to guide attendees through the curatorial chronology.

Photography by Joe Kramm

4. Joe Kramm’s Farmhouse

Joe is an incredibly talented photographer specializing in art, design, and interiors. We are proud to call him a friend and so grateful to be part of this spectacular 1902 waterfront Pennsylvania farmhouse; it features Alkemis Paint throughout.

Photography by Joe Kramm; courtesy of Roberto Lugo and R & Company

5. Roberto Lugo

Roberto is a Puerto Rican-American ceramicist, activist, and poet who reimagines classical porcelain and pottery. Hearing him speak about the social justice messages in his work brought us to tears. It’s been incredible to watch his success and to play even a very small part in his journey as the vibrant backdrop to some of his exhibitions.

Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury speak different design languages. The founder of StudioPROBA moves fluidly between murals, interiors, furniture, and public art to build exuberant compositions rooted in emotion and color. Bembury, meanwhile, has become one of contemporary footwear’s most recognizable designers, translating fingerprints, topography, and organic textures into highly coveted sneakers and products. Yet despite working in different disciplines, both have long shared an interest in how color and pattern shape the way people experience an object.

Salehe Bembury and Alex Proba with their new collection, Soft Imprints. Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

That common ground forms the basis of Soft Imprints, the duo’s second collaboration (Absorbed Language launched in 2021). The limited-edition collection of rugs and pillows combines Bembury’s signature fingerprint motif with Proba’s abstract forms and saturated palettes, creating tactile pieces that feel like functional furnishings as much as collectible works.

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

Rather than treating pattern as decoration, the collection uses repetition, texture, and color to create movement across woven surfaces. Two rug designs and two pillow styles merge the designers’ visual vocabularies into what feels less like a mash-up than a natural evolution of individual ideas.

“I’ve always believed that objects should make you feel something,” Proba says. “With Soft Imprints, we wanted every piece to feel joyful, tactile, and full of life.”

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

That emotional dimension has long been central to Proba’s practice, which spans painting, interiors, sculpture, and public installations. For Bembury, whose work frequently draws inspiration from nature and the human touch, the collaboration reflects a shared confidence in intuition over trends.

“I’ve always admired how fearless Alex is with color,” Bembury says. “We both trust our instincts, and that’s a much more interesting place to start than a trend forecast.”

Color is one of the collaboration’s strongest points of connection. Even though their careers have developed in different industries, both designers see color as something that fundamentally changes the relationship between people and objects.

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

“Alex and I have always shared a similar way of looking at color,” Bembury explains. “Even though we work in different mediums, we both believe color can completely change how someone experiences an object.”

That mutual understanding also shaped the creative process itself. Soft Imprints embraces the distinctiveness of both practices, rather than trying to soften the individual aesthetics.

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

“The best collaborations happen when both people have a clear point of view,” Bembury says. “Alex’s work is unmistakably hers, and that’s what makes building something together interesting.”

Proba echoes that sentiment, describing the collection as the product of a long creative dialogue rather than a one-off partnership.

“Design is a conversation,” she says. “This collection is the result of years of mutual respect, curiosity, and a shared desire to create objects that people want to live with.”

Photography courtesy of Alex Proba and Salehe Bembury.

Produced as a limited edition of just 80 rugs and 200 pillows, Soft Imprints will be available in limited quantities on probahome.com and salehebembury.com.

Editorial Transparency: This article was developed with the assistance of AI tools, which may have been used for research, outlining, editing, or copy refinement. Reporting, fact-checking, and editorial decisions were made by the Design Milk editorial team.

The phenomenon of light—in all its glory—is central to Jordan Soderberg Mills’ oeuvre. He has created numerous immersive works for temporary and permanent commissions around the world with a wonderful simplicity that belies the complex physics that make them possible. And his latest prismatic experimentation is now woven into the very architecture of a decommissioned 15th century church in Brussels. Framed in black ironwork, the Boondael Chapel’s 14 windows now refract light to create rainbow effects that shift throughout the day and the seasons.

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

The Canadian artist, who also works and lives in Europe, had earlier participated in a Design Museum Ghent exhibition inspired by Jan Van Eyck, who invented techniques that layered transparent glazes in a certain way to create distinct optical effects. “There was a very specific altar piece that’s in Ghent, with an inscription saying the Virgin Mary is the reflection of eternal light,” Soderberg Mills says. “I thought, How can I represent eternal light? How can I create something that uses this idea of multiple layers and glazes that the Renaissance painter used? So I made Eternal Light + a Spotless Mirror.”

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

That piece gave Soderberg Mills visibility in Belgium, but the exhibition’s opening coincided with COVID-19 lockdowns. It made him all the more eager to have his work seen and felt. Then came the open call for the former church and present-day arts venue in Brussels. It had a very specific requirement: The glass had to be colorless and completely transparent. This, too, presented a challenge. “Because my practice is such an exploration of color and perception and light,” he says, explaining his thought process, “how can I kind of cheat the system or be cheeky a little bit in order to produce glass that is colorless but that transmits color?”

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

In Gothic churches, light was treated as a divine element. “A church window is a really mystical thing,” he says. While researching the adaptive reuse of old churches in Belgium, Soderberg Mills came across chapels along the coast of the North Sea where bell towers doubled as lighthouses. It prompted him to reference Belgian architecture in an interesting way; he sought to create something “mythical or magical realist” while also honoring the now-secular use of the church building.

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

Whatever he envisioned, he needed to collaborate with Belgian fabricators—another criterion of the open call. Soderberg Mills found one that supplies beakers to local laboratories, and a company that makes iron work windows for train stations. The laboratory glass is especially important—it takes the shape of long borosilicate tubes, or canes, that are star-shaped in cross-section. Together, they form a ribbed surface. The canes are internally etched with billions of microscopic apertures that scatter light into spectral bands.

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

Another lab, this one in California, produced the film that is embedded inside the glass extrusions. “The film is used in spectrography,” Soderberg Mills explains, “anything that reflects light will have a chromatic signature and the composition of the rainbow will tell you what a star is made of.” Together with the etched glass canes, the film refracts daylight into “vibrant, shifting spectral color, turning the chapel into both a sanctuary and a living lens.”

Photography by Franziska Krieck.

By curving the light, the iron-framed windows produce different perspectives at different times of the day and the year. Soderberg Mills likens it to a sundial, which produces a completely unique experience depending on when you enter the church. “It’s about creating something that’s fixed that also gives this sense of motion and movement, which is really the motion of the planet through through space—this cosmological dance,” he says.

Diagram courtesy of Jordan Soderberg Mills.