One of the most enduring traditions in the U.S. is undoubtedly the state fair. The very first was held in Syracuse, New York, in 1841, and throughout the mid-19th century, states launched their own unique takes. Some of the largest and busiest, such as those in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, have been running just about as long as the states have existed. And it’s no coincidence that some of the most well known and beloved events, which usually take place in the late summer or early autumn, represent the nation’s agricultural heartlands.

The exhibition State Fairs: Growing American Craft at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery celebrates the unique crafts and customs of these annual festivals. From cows sculpted out of butter and 4-H contests to seed art and crazy foods, ingenuity is as much a part of the tradition as showcasing time-honored farming practices, rural culture, industry, and of course, arts and crafts.

The Minnesota State Fair is particularly well known for its seed art, which consists of tableaux made entirely of grains and seeds that are cultivated in the state. Artists often translate famous artworks using a variety of crops, and portraits of celebrities are another popular subject. When submitted for consideration, artists must supply a “legend card” that demonstrates which seeds they used.

The Renwick Gallery show highlights more than 240 objects and artworks, from elaborate contemporary jewelry pieces to historic quilts to a rhinestone rodeo outfit. A contemporary mixed-media resin necklace by artist and jewelry designer Morgan Hill celebrates treats and pastimes, while a geometric weaving by Agueda Martínez (1898-2000) highlights the extraordinary craft of Southwest tapestry blanket weaving.

Growing American Craft is the first large-scale survey of state fair creativity of its kind, representing 43 states and Tribal Nations. “Ribbon-winning artworks and engaging craft demonstrations illuminate the lives of the artists—their families, memories, honors, and struggles,” the museum says.

Part of the show’s aim is to highlight the pride, resilience, and inventiveness of rural communities, dashing stereotypes in the process and illuminating how fairgrounds are woven into the social fabric of the U.S. Visitors encounter a wide range of unique interpretations of state fair events, such as a pyramid of more than 700 glass jars of preserved fruits and vegetables by canner extraordinaire Rod Zeitler.

Crops themselves take center stage in many of the works, including an elaborate sweetgrass basket by South Carolinian artist Corey Alston, who draws on the Gullah Geechee basket traditions to weave remarkably imaginative designs. And Justin Favela has also reimagined the palatial Rubenstein Grand Salon into an immersive space titled “Capilla de Maiz (Maize Chapel).” The walls are fringed with gold and piñata corncobs, tapping into the role of maize in America throughout several millennia.

State Fairs: Growing American Craft continues through September 7 in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian has also produced a beautiful catalogue to accompany the show, which you can find on Bookshop.

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Bristol-based artist Diana Beltrán Herrera continues to construct elaborate sculptures of flora and fauna in vibrant paper. Over the last few years, Herrera’s work has grown in both scale and subject matter as she incorporates new materials such as paperboard, thread, and cardboard, which have allowed her work to evolve beyond previous forms.

The artist’s latest explorations of nature motifs include flower structures, leaf patterns, and most recently, coral formations. Uniquely, coral reefs exhibit fractal and hyperbolic geometry, making them a particularly fascinating subject for sculptural reproduction. Utilizing thread as a structural tool has been especially integral for Herrera’s explorations of different species, as she creates dozens of iterations with an array of colorful tentacles and skeletons.

“When working with embroidery, I am particularly interested in how paper can borrow techniques traditionally associated with textiles,” the artist shares with Colossal. “Thread becomes a way of drawing, connecting, and constructing forms.”

Aside from her personal practice, Herrera also continues to produce commissioned works for clients around the world. This month, the artist is sending her first family of coral research works to the Deutsches Museum in Munich, where they will be exhibited in an installation opening at the end of June. Find more from the artist on Instagram.

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Designer Taekhan Yun’s parents run an English school in Cambodia. One day, during a visit, he noticed how the kids were constantly shifting in their chairs, trying to get comfortable. “It made me realize how naturally furniture and spaces are designed around adult standards, while children are often expected to adapt and conform to those environments,” he tells Colossal. That’s when the idea was born to not only create functional pieces that would better suit the students’ needs but to invite them to create their own.

Yun has always been interested in participatory creative projects, especially because of “the unexpected outcomes that emerge when people from different backgrounds come together to create something collectively,” he says. “Children, in particular, tend to view objects with a freedom that is less constrained by function, convention, or rules. Their choices and interventions often transform not only the final result but also the process itself.”

Through a series of hands-on workshops, Yun invited the children to conceive of whimsical chairs and birdhouses, first by inviting them to draw with colored pencils and then sculpt prototypes out of clay. The artist then fashioned their dream designs into full-scale wooden objects that exactly translate their ideas. The result is a joyful and inviting collection of functional artworks that celebrate community. Each object is lovely on its own, but when gathered with its peers, the group is even more vibrant and inspirational, much like the way ideas can expand and evolve through brainstorming and learning.

Yun plans to continue presenting similar workshops and is currently coordinating a couple in South Korea and Saudi Arabia. “Working with children has gradually shifted my focus from the final objects themselves to the ways children perceive, imagine, and interpret the world around them,” he says. “I hope to expand the chair project internationally in the near future by collaborating with children from different cultural and social backgrounds around the world.”

See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Glossy, synthetic, and very compressed, Ant Hamlyn’s botanicals are unlike anything you’d find in nature. He taps into the aesthetic of Y2K and the early 2000s, when early computer graphics, sci-fi, and teen punk melded into a kind of optimistic, tech-forward visual experience. Think early flip phones, polyurethane miniskirts, and Now That’s What I Call Music on CD.

Better Go South, which presents the artist’s current solo exhibition Soft // Chrome, describes the artist’s approach as “celebrating our human capacity to find beauty and connection even within the most manufactured environments.”

Hamlyn’s playful, cartoonish works center around stuffed and squished polyurethane flowers, invoking a kind of “liquid metal” redux that nods to our past optimism about technology while acknowledging the anxieties that have evolved and continue to grow in the post-digital age.

See the works by appointment in Stuttgart, and check out more on the artist’s Instagram.

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Based in the foothills of Cambewarra Mountain in New South Wales, Australia, Tamara Dean captures ethereal images that explore the intrinsic bond between the human body and the natural world. She is driven by what she describes as a desire to “explore the reality that humans are not separate from nature, but intrinsically part of it.”

Using bodies to express this relationship, the figures within her compositions do not emerge as prominent subjects of portraiture. Instead, they exist as elements embedded within each scene, often emerging as extensions of surrounding flora. “I am interested in those moments when the body appears to merge with the landscape, becoming almost plant-like, animal-like or elemental, suggesting that we are participants in nature rather than observers of it,” she explains.

“Introversion” depicts crouching figures hiding inside frilly blue tutus that imitate their neighboring flowers, calling to an almost instinctive impulse to camouflage. In a vibrant pop of color, two hot pink-haired heads in “In Bloom” mimic nearby lotus flower buds, waiting to bloom alongside lotus plants.

Gesture is an integral part of Dean’s process. While directing the figures within her work, the photographer explains, “I often encourage them to respond intuitively to their surroundings. At times, this involves reflecting the structures, rhythms, or symmetries found in nearby flora and foliage through their physical placement, posture, or gesture.” These visible idiosyncrasies further the dynamic exchange between human and other life forms.

Lately, Dean has spent more time painting. “It’s something I have always done quietly in the background as part of my creative process,” she explains. “But only now that my children are 19 and 20 have I been able to dedicate myself to it more fully. I’m enjoying the challenge of working in a different medium and the change in perspective it brings.”

These paintings, alongside several photographs, will be included in a forthcoming solo exhibition early next year at Michael Reid in Sydney. Last week, she opened Leave only footprints at Manly Art Gallery and Museum, which is on view through August 2. Find Dean on Instagram to follow along with her ongoing interdisciplinary explorations.

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In the statement for Annalise Gratovich’s solo exhibition, Carrying Things From Home, the gallery poses a couple of questions: “When war, displacement, and migration sever familial and cultural ties, how do we sustain a sense of self and ancestral connection? How do we hybridize in a new homeland?” For the artist, who is based in Austin and runs High Low Print Co., her family’s history informs a printmaking practice that explores deeply personal and even spiritual links to land, home, and a sense of belonging.

Hecho a Mano presents eight large-scale, hand-carved woodblock prints in Carrying Things From Home, which have been painstakingly created between 2014 and 2025. Gratovich meticulously carves totemic, matryoshka-like figures that stand nearly life-size with headdresses of flora and fauna and garments that resemble embroidered Ukrainian textiles.

The series taps into Gratovich’s ancestral history, nodding to the tumult of World War II when her grandparents fled Ukraine in the cover of night with their son—the artist’s father—and could only take what they could physically carry. “What was lost or left behind has become a source of mystery and mythology, and through printmaking, I investigate how this absence influences my sense of self and how I value materiality,” she says.

The blocks themselves can take up to six months to carve, and then working with her team, Gratovich adds thin pieces of colorful paper through chine collé. “For my most recent works in the series, ‘The Healer’ and ‘The Fool,’ I prepared close to 2,000 pieces of paper,” she says. “They have 69 and 70 pieces of hand dyed paper coloring each woodcut, respectively.”

Gratovich’s serene figures coalesce with nature and symbolic objects, such as musical instruments and animals, reflected in titles like “The Builder,” who holds a raptor, and “The Healer,” who balances a swirling, cosmic flow of energy. And from carved block to expansive print, the process requires precision and a few helping hands. “There’s a community aspect that’s engaging and fun—my big woodcuts require a team of four people to print,” the artist tells Colossal. “We use a printing press that is over four by eight feet, and everyone is integral in the printing process.”

Carrying Things From Home continues through June 28 in Santa Fe. Gratovich is also preparing for a residency at Hello Print Friend Studios in Chang Mai, Thailand, after which she’ll be the keynote speaker at the Guild of Bookworkers’ Standards of Excellence 2026 conference. That takes place in Austin, where she also has a studio at the Canopy Austin complex, which is open by appointment. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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“The question that has always stayed with me is the one the market rarely asks: what happened in the studio before the work arrived? The sketches abandoned, the ideas reconsidered, the moment something became itself?”

That is Shlomi Rabi, founder of Bridgewell Arts and a former auction-house specialist, describing what he is now looking for in his new role on the jury of the .ART Award. The global art prize opened for applications this May to mark the 10th anniversary of the .ART domain.

The .ART Award’s format follows from his question. Every artist who applies builds a working archive in the process: their bio, their work, the story behind it, gathered in one place on a .ART domain. “We rarely get to see how an idea becomes a work of art,” says jury member Akanksha Ballaney, Senior Director of Business Development at Artsy and Artnet. “This award changes that by making the journey as important as the destination.”

Alongside Rabi and Ballaney, the 10-person international panel includes Pulitzer-winning art critic Jerry Saltz (New York Magazine), poet and digital artist Sasha Stiles (co-founder of theVERSEverse and the artist behind A Living Poem at MoMA), media arts curator Regina Harsanyi (Museum of the Moving Image), Dean Phelus (American Alliance of Museums, Museum Magazine), Gijs Stork (Château du Fresne), Laurent Moïsi (Whitewall Magazine), Leo Crane (AIFA Ventures), and Irina Tarsis (Center for Art Law).

Stiles, whose own practice spans poetry, code, and large language models, frames her interest plainly: “I’m fascinated by the inner workings of the artist’s studio, the layers of inspiration and influence and craft, the process behind an artwork.”

The total prize value for the .ART Award exceeds $50,000, including a $15,000 Grand Prize, residencies at Château du Fresne in France and Anfitrion in Spain, an editorial feature in Whitewall Magazine, and a premium .ART domain valued at $10,000.

Applications for the .ART Award close on  November 1, 2026, with winners to be announced on December 3 during Art Basel Miami. It is free to enter and open to artists worldwide working in any discipline. 

Apply now at award.art.

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In the ever-expanding pantheon of open-world video games where combat, survival, crafting, and anarchy reign, the simple idea of taking a virtual walk while chatting with a few friends might seem pointless. A new video game from Melbourne-based developer House House begs to differ, though, turning a casual stroll across dreamy landscapes into a uniquely collaborative game, where puzzles and the lengths required to solve them take center stage. Some areas of Big Walk render players speechless, forcing you to devise innovative ways to communicate. It might just be the antithesis of Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto.

This friendly, casual, and playful approach to game design may come as no surprise from the makers of the critically acclaimed Untitled Goose Game, which is centered entirely on a hapless goose that navigates everyday environments while avoiding the unwanted attention of nearby humans. “As much as Big Walk is a game about walking and talking, it’s also about exploring, and getting lost, and doing challenges, and sometimes, not really doing anything at all,” shares a game trailer.

You can play this “cooperative online walker-talker” on Steam, Switch 2, and PlayStation 5 beginning August 4.

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The Colombian artist Delcy Morelos describes her hometown of Tierralta as “a paradise full of butterflies and unpaved streets.” In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Morelos spent her days in her grandmother’s garden, running barefoot and gleaning what it meant to live in connection with the land. When paramilitary and guerrilla troops moved in, though, the region was plunged into a chaotic state of grief and fear.

In her earliest works, Morelos translated the death and destruction plaguing her home into two-dimensional compositions. As she details in a new segment for Art21, acrylic painting was not long her primary mode of working, and quickly, she returned to the earth, incorporating soil, straw, and grass into large-scale installations. The film follows the artist as she installs a sepulchral mound in Seville’s Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, a former Carthusian monastery turned art museum that once housed Christopher Columbus’ remains.

Throughout the film, we witness Morelos grab gobs of straw-laden soil and affix the chunky material to a standing structure, which eventually grows a range of produce native to both sides of the Atlantic. In contrast to the space’s colonial ties, the artist’s work presents a way of creating and living that’s entwined in natural rhythms. Visitors are greeted by notes of cinnamon, cloves, and fecund soil before being enveloped by towering walls of growth. Within the vaulted monastery, Morelos’ indomitable forms offer a direct tie to the sacred and divine right beneath our feet.

“Many people believe they are in a bubble, and that is why they can do things that harm nature, harm others, and also harm themselves,” she says, demonstrating a profound sense of care for and connection to all that gives life.

This segment is part of Art21’s Human Nature episode and is available to watch on its site. Find additional films on YouTube.

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As collector Jochen Raiß (1969-2022) scoured flea markets and antique stalls for the better part of three decades for snapshots, he began to notice a running theme. Over time, he amassed a trove of photos by anonymous photographers with an unusually high number of portraits of women posing in trees. Swiss newspaper Züricher Tagesanzeiger asked, “What are they all doing up there?” And German paper Der Spiegel posited that the arbor-climbing might be a “forgotten popular sport.” Whatever the reason, the mystery is nearly as fun as the photos.

A hardcover edition of Women in Trees from Hatje Cantz, published in German and English, follows two titles published in 2016 and 2017 that celebrate these quirky images. Find your copy on the publisher’s website.

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