The National’s Matt Berninger and Rosanne Cash have shared a cover of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Who Loves The Sun’ for Hulu’s dramedy series Sunny Nights. Listen to their take on the Loaded opener below.
“I’ve been a Trent O’Donnell fan for a long time,” Berninger said in a statement. “We became good friends when he cast my brother, Tom, in an episode of his show No Activity, and we’ve had a close, creative bond ever since. When he asked me to cover the Velvet Underground for Sunny Nights, I immediately thought of it as a duet with Rose and John [Leventhal] . We recorded it in their Chelsea brownstone last summer. John did most of the work while Rose and I drank chardonnay in the garden in the sun.”
Sunny Nights launched on Australian streamer Stan in late December and arrives on Huly March 11. Matt Berninger released his most recent album, Get Sunk, last year.
The camera catches Buck Meek hanging onto a fence, illuminating the boundary between him and total darkness, which even his black suit seems to be blending into. On the cover of his new album The Mirror, the Big Thief guitarist is glancing back as if meeting his reflection in the lens, his shoulder obscuring his expression just enough: it’s not clear whether he’s startled, running away from something, or trying to break on through. Perhaps he’s heading to the “the tunnel underneath the road” that he finds on ‘Demon’, “a place I go to sing with echo, echo, echo” – a natural magic further filtered by the voices that tune into it throughout the record, a choir that includes Adrianne Lenker, Germaine Dunes, Staci Foster, and Jolie Holland, and bordering the electronic world fashioned by his Big Thief bandmate and producer James Krivchenia. But just like he sings of trying to write a song that is not for others on ‘Heart in the Mirror’, he’s aware of the dark side of his soul being exposed while learning to foster something good and even divine out of it rather than projecting it outward. “My demon is my darkness, and my darkness is my angel,” he professes, “I taught him how to read, now I’m teaching him to write.” The Mirror bears the fruit.
We caught up with Buck Meek to talk about kissing, fast cars, natural disasters, and other inspirations behind his new album, The Mirror.
Death
This sounds like a heavy place to start, but I think it’s worth noting that the first time you allude to it on The Mirror, it’s in this joyfully spiritual way on ‘Gasoline’. It does take different forms later on the record, but that lightheartedness feels intentional as a starting place.
That resonates for sure. I’m just starting to experience real death in my life, with people that are close to me. My grandmother passed away a couple of years ago. The first song I wrote for the album was ‘Outta Body’, which was processing the grief of her passing away. She was a really brilliant woman. She was a professor, and I had a lot of conversations with her about books, and also about my songs. She had read, like, every book in the world. I was really missing conversations with her, and I wrote that song as this fantasy world that I’d built around being able to communicate with her after death. The thing I love about songs is you can create a world that defies physical reality, and you can live inside of that world – and almost believe it, for a moment, especially while you’re writing it. Hopefully that translates to the listener, but to me, the most valuable thing is just living in that space as I write the song. I almost believed it: I was talking with her, and she was winking at me through the screen, through Ingrid Bergman.
I think that set me off in a direction with this album, creating my own relationship with death a little bit. The whole industrial complex of religion is, to some degree, built around this idea of security in the afterlife. It’s one of the only things that we really don’t know and understand, so in a way, it’s this idea of magic that ties it all together, too. The ways that we all deal with that is really beautiful. I’m just trying to deal with it my own way throughout the record.
For you, do songs come out of that relationship that don’t immediately live in a fantastical realm? Do you feel the urge to write from a raw, non-magical place before twisting it in that direction?
I love songs that do both. Often those are my favorite songs to sing, the ones that start from a place of brutal honesty or confession, or do something that’s really simple but objectively true. In the writing process, whenever I feel myself limited by that, I allow myself to bend reality. That can be really exciting, and it often loops back to truth. Truth isn’t limited to objective truth, necessarily – emotional truth can be much more abstract than reality. But I think the combination is my fav.
Poison
I think that speaks to the latest single, ‘Can I Mend It?’, and the track that precedes it on the record, ‘Pretty Flowers’, which starts from a raw emotional place where the poison is a kind of meanness or anger, and then you bend reality to look at it through the lens of metaphor.
It’s so easy to forget that line between life and death and become numb to it, until you have a near-death experience or a death in your family – whatever reminder snaps you back into the awareness that the line is so thin. Our survival is so precious, and everything we’ve built in society is just there to attempt to protect us from death. Being aware of it makes me feel more alive, and in the songwriting process, that feels inspiring. It helps me prioritize what really matters in a song, weirdly. I like to approach a song as fighting for your life a little bit. Every word counts to the point of survival, at least in this abstract creative space.
My dog Ringo, she’s a little husky dog. We were in the mountains where we were living, and she had found this rattlesnake head. We found her crying like crazy; she was whelping, and there was this rattlesnake head that had been severed, with its huge fangs, this rattlesnake blood. We grabbed her and put her in the car, but she had grabbed this rattlesnake, because she was so obsessed with it, but also so disturbed by it. She’d brought the rattlesnake into the car, and the rattlesnake went under the car chair. She couldn’t get to it, and she started going crazy. She was making sounds I’d never heard before; it was really scary. I thought she had been bitten by this rattlesnake, or it was dead and she bit it but the poison was still active. I’d looked it up on my phone, and it said if a dog bites a dead rattlesnake – if it hasn’t been dead for long, the poison’s still active.
It turned out she was fine. The rattlesnake poison had completely dried up. Nonetheless, little moments like these wake me up to what really matters. And also the absurdity [laughs] of this idea that we’re secure – that feeds back into the process and the songs.
In the mountains up there, the spring has so many wild flowers, and there’s this one called the Datura. It looks like a beautiful white wedding gown. It’s super poisonous if your dog eats it. Where I was writing, there was a big Datura in the yard I was looking at, and that’s when I wrote the line for ‘Pretty Flowers’. But I did change the name of it to Jimson, which is another poisonous flower, because it worked better in the melodic rhythm. I guess that’s an example of starting with – Ringo didn’t actually eat the poison flower; she ate a rattlesnake. But there was a poison flower in my yard, which was a Datura, but I changed it to Jimson.
I did want to lean into that line about poison, because I feel like it also reflects the demons that you confront through the record. Over the years, have you found yourself more or less cautious of things like madness, darkness, and spite seeping into your songs? Is it sometimes necessary to lock them out?
I think locking them out creates a stigma, and then they grow and rear their head in other ways. For me, songs are a good way to practice letting them out, and it’s a very forgiving environment because it’s just my own head. But it’s also an externalization of whatever demons it allows me to look at and let them go. I think as a younger songwriter, I would avoid it for whatever reasons. With this record especially, I really tried to let it fly.
“Teaching him to write,” which is a really lovely way that you put it on ‘Demon’.
Thank you. Just trying to get to the bottom of it, because usually beneath those fears, there’s something very sweet or vulnerable. Vocalizing or expressing it often will get beneath to the root of those fears.
Do you feel like there’s a risk of romanticizing the darkness as a muse?
Definitely. It’s a huge problem in the world. I don’t mean to romanticize it, just trying to find the middle ground with it – to not romanticize it, but also to not suppress it, which creates other problems. Giving it a voice and listening to it, but not following it into the darkness, necessarily.
Kissing
There’s the obvious fact that your new band opening your solo tour is called Kisser, although kissing is also a motif throughout The Mirror, from ‘Gasoline’ to ‘Heart in the Mirror’ to ‘Outta Body’. Looking at those songs, it’s almost like the thread is that the kissing becomes increasiblysurreal.
I didn’t really think of that. What lines are you referring to with it becoming more abstract? That’s cool.
There’s kissing a person, and then inanimate objects, and finally that line you alluded to: “Ingrid Bergman kissing on the silver screen/ Am I crazy or did shе just wink at me?”
Oh, yeah. Kissing is the best. We all love kissing. It’s such an important form of communication without words. I realized as I was writing that there’s a lot of themes of communication in these songs. There are a lot of love songs on the album, but they also trace different phases of relationships, different types of relationships, romantic and familial and friendships. Communication is such an essential part of a relationship, and words are such powerful tools, but there are limitations to them. When we’re in love or we feel really close to someone, there’s a lot more communication happening beyond our words. And kissing is such a funny one because it looks like we’re talking, in a way, just very close to the point where we can’t even talk. It’s such a hilarious, unanimous example of how, when words fail us, we can kiss each other. [laughs]
In regards to what you said before, it showing up in different ways on the album, both literally kissing my wife and also kissing fruit, that sense of longing to the point where you can’t contain yourself any longer, to kiss something – ‘Kiss the Mirror’, which is another song that isn’t on this record. I used to kiss my mirror as a kid, we probably all did, whether we’re willing to admit it or not. With every song, I tried to push into the things I was afraid to say, the things that were scary or vulnerable to say. A lot of those lines are examples of that – it’s a little scary to say, “I’m gonna kiss fruit bread, and kiss bread, and kiss the carpet.” In a song, it feels kinda dumb. But also, as soon as I said it, it felt really empowering. And then that reenergizes the whole process.
Do you feel like part of tackling that fear has to do with reconnecting with your child self? Is that something that came up for you?
Yeah, definitely. Which is kind of the inverse of some of those fears and demons I’m talking about on these songs. Trying to relinquish the programming of self-consciousness that’s forced upon us as adults. Especially as a songwriter and musician, which is this competitive environment, like a sport to some degree, even with the press. Even within the music community itself, there is this form of competition and judgment that really has nothing to do with music at all. And that creates stigma and fears, and to counterbalance that, connecting with the child is an intuitive, instinctual process. It’s kind of the antidote for that.
Fast cars
The cabin where we were living when I was writing these songs and recording them is in the mountains, surrounded by all these twisty roads everywhere. But a lot of the mountain range is also alongside the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles – you’ve probably heard the term “valley girl.” It’s basically this endless suburb of immigrant communities and mechanic shops for every possible type of car you can imagine – every hot rod, every subtle variety of specialty car shop. There’s this incredible culture of valley teenagers with these crazy hot rod race cars in the suburbs. On the weekends – and late at night, at three in the morning – they take the race cars up into the mountains and they race and drive around. There’s all these beautiful vistas up there that look out over the city, and they park their cars and make out, to bring it back to kissing. Often, as you’re going home, you’ll come around the corner and your headlights will flash on this beautiful Camaro with two teenagers making out on the side of it. Every single day, you’re seeing these scenes of American romance, just like the movies. But it’s real – it’s just these 19-year-old kids trying to find a sense of freedom, literally rising above the city. And you hear it constantly, too. These cars are really loud. It’s a weird juxtaposition: this peaceful place with birds and stuff, and then race cars all the time.
I just find that kind of thing inspiring, and it has nothing to do with the songs directly, but I put it in this list because the songs themselves and the album and the recording – all of these constructs we build around our ideas are just little analogues for our lives as a whole. Of course, I could determine specific inspirations for songs and life experience that is being reflected in the songs literally, but really, what it all is is just a filter for my life, the day-to-day. Even the players that are on the album are just a small part of a much bigger community of musicians around the world that have influenced me over the years, that I’ve played directly and indirectly. It’s all being fed into the music. We have a decisive moment where we choose a word, a melody, a chord, a player, a band, a microphone, a level in the mix, a song title, an album title, but these are all just little symbols in a construct we’re building around something that’s so much bigger and impossible to capture. The kids in their cars were just part of that fabric, I guess.
The way you talked about the noise piercing through the quiet of the landscape also made me think of the experimentation on the album and how it counteracts its organic elements.
I love that. I love the balance of extremes in general, and we definitely put a lot of intention into creating this balance of organic recording of a rock and roll band in a room playing instruments, with this parallel world of electronic instruments that was more ambient and less defined; more of a texture, an unpredictable synthetic world that was running parallel to the band – and also, to a huge extent, being triggered by the band. James Krivchenia was using the band as sources for his modular synthesizers and his programs. We weren’t even hearing it happening, so we were just playing our songs, and unbeknownst to us, there’s all this electronic music being created in parallel.
Natural disasters
They say the four seasons in California are floods, earthquakes, fires, and landslides. The Santa Ana winds come every year, which are these super fast, 100mph winds, and if a single match goes down, the whole mountain range goes on fire. That strips away all the root systems, so as soon as it rains, there’s all these floods in the spring. There’s no roots to hold the mud, so there’s mudslides everywhere. There was a big mudslide a couple of years ago, right around the time my grandmother passed away. There’s only three roads that go into the canyon, and all three of them had mudslides, so the whole canyon was shut down. We were all trapped in there. Suddenly, it was the most peaceful day I’d ever seen in the canyon. There were no cars, and there were these huge mudslides everywhere. School was cancelled, and all these little kids were playing in the mud, sliding around their butts in the mud. It was super fun. It slowed everybody down, I guess.
The fires were happening as we were recording the album. Just over the hill, there was this giant fire in Malibu. And shortly after this album, Topanga burned in the Palisades burns. That fire came just a hundred yards to the house where we recorded. It’s terrible when these disasters happen, of course; it uproots families and destroys homes. But at the same time, I definitely saw it bring a community together in a way I’d never seen before. There was literally a gang of surfers that banded together to help the firefighters put out spotfires. The relief that comes after from people coming together is really beautiful.
It’s also a healthy reminder that we’re not meant to live there in the first place. These mountains are young and pretty chaotic; the people that lived here before us, the Chumash people, were nomadic, so they could move around the fires, pick up camp and scoot up there, get out of the way. But building these permanent structures makes no sense. It’s just a matter of time they’re gonna go down. All of these things are inspirations to me when writing, again, just to remind me of the thin line, this idea of security and stability, and the truth of how fragile it all really is.
Boundaries
If there’s a line that sums up the whole album, it’s “The line between us all is thin.”
This is a big one. The wide concept of boundaries was something I was thinking about a lot while writing the album, and also in my life, regardless of songwriting. The inherent boundary of our body and our own consciousness being isolated, and all of the ways in which we try to reach out beyond that boundary to communicate with others. That line is very static in one way – we have a body – but also it’s really fluid in other ways. There’s a lot of relativity there. Even with sound, for instance, we can produce sound which leaves the boundary and suddenly is reflecting off of all the surfaces in the space and literally combining with other sounds. That’s just one example of how these boundaries are being bent constantly.
The mirror is this strange aspect of that, too. It’s a physical boundary, an extremely reflective dense surface, but it also reflects us back to ourselves. There’s objectivity there, but there’s also so much relativity, because there’s perception, and our perception is so biased. All of the ways we’re seeing ourselves through filters of whatever we’ve been taught to see ourselves. There’s so many contradictions in the idea of a mirror. Also, the mirror of a relationship, having yourself reflected back to you through their perception. Their ability to see you in ways you can’t see yourself, just like a mirror, and how that can be really challenging – but also, we’re somehow incentivized to look into that mirror. Maybe love is in some way a reward system for that, this form of incentive to continue to look at yourself in the mirror through another. Maybe because otherwise we’ll die, or we’ll completely lose touch with ourselves and any kind of objective reality.
In regards to my own relationship with boundaries, I think socially, as a younger person, I would often compromise my own boundaries to please others a lot. In the moment, I would see that as a way to make other people happy. I was pleasing others because I didn’t want to inconvenience them or hurt them, but in the long run, it’s actually more damaging. To not be fully honest with my own truth in the long run is not serving anyone. That’s been a big lesson for me over the years, to try to set healthy boundaries for myself and show up for my relationships with total honesty about my own truth. That’s a lifelong process, but I was thinking about that, and songs like ‘God Knows Why’ are a more direct exploration of that.
How do you experience the tension between how you’re perceived and how you see yourself when it comes to releasing music?
It’s something that you’re hyperaware of as someone who’s going on stage and sings songs. The whole nature of that medium is being perceived. You’re putting artifacts into the world that, as soon as you release them into the world, are suddenly beyond your control. They’re in the minds of others. It’s like your kids are sneaking out at night, getting up to things you have no idea about. That’s scary at first, but I think that’s also one of the things I love about making music. It’s definitely been a process to really embody my own confidence and decisiveness in creating something for myself. As I say in the song ‘Heart in the Mirror’, writing a song for me, really for me, which is a question I have to ask myself with every word of a song: Am I writing this for me or am I writing this for others? Am I writing this for the critics, for my friends? Am I writing this out of fear for others, or am I writing it for myself?
Not that there’s a hard rule – sometimes I write a song for others, but at least I want to be aware of it. Maybe I’m getting better at that. The truth is that if I’m writing something really for myself, that comes from a real confidence, then I really don’t care at all what other people think about it. I have no problem. Everybody is going to feel differently about it, and as long as I feel clear about it, that’s enough. That’s one of my primary filters, at this point, for when a song is done.
Outside of music, is the difference between mere perception and being seen something that’s become tangible to you?
Our lives are defined by that to a huge degree. Every time we leave the house, it’s this balance of being seen and your own self-perception. As I get older, I think I’m learning to really embody my own truth and offer that to the world, even just socially, when I go to the grocery store or whatever. Accepting the discrepancies – trying to accept myself for who I really am, because actually just being that is more generous. It gives people the ability to respond to who I really am instead of this whole ruse.
One more question on boundaries: Is there a point where, maybe you know who’s singing or playing a part in the recording, but that boundary between the sound and its origin sort of dissipates?
Yes. Part of the magic of making music is that those boundaries disappear through sound. You’re literally combining people’s voices and instruments, and then it’s this alchemical process that adds up to something greater than the sum of its parts. It becomes something completely new. I think our survival instinct has tuned our ears to have hyperawareness of frequency – it provides this environment to really hear how the overtones of everyone’s voices and instruments, the way they’re manipulated in a mix, is creating new resonances and EQ curves, all kinds of sympathetic frequencies that weren’t there before. I love how the human ear has developed to the point to actually perceive all of that, to a huge degree at least.
Do you mind sharing one memory of this kind of alchemical reaction happening on the new record?
Totally. Let me think. [pauses] Whenever we recorded background vocals with Adrianne Lenker and Germaine Dunes and Staci Foster – they recorded on a bunch of songs, but I think it was on the song ‘Gasoline’ that they each take a verse. In the room, of course, when they were recording, I could hear all their voices independently, and they sound like themselves. But then somehow, because they were blending with each other and blending with me, finding this little pocket within my voice, it’s often hard for me to determine which is which when I listen back. I can’t tell if it’s Adrianne or Germaine or Staci; all of their voices kind of became one. Maybe because even though they were taking turns singing, it was this moment of unity where they were all singing with me and so tuned into my voice that they were kind of adapting their own vocal cords to that.
It almost sounds like one person sang the part, which often happens – some of my best friends are identical twins: Adam and David Moss, they have a band called the Brother Brothers where they sing in harmony. It’s crazy because their voices are almost identical. Of course, they do have their own character, but especially when they sing, it’s impossible to tell the difference. It sounds like one person singing with two voices. I think there’s a lot of examples of that on the record.
Durak (Fool) card game
This is just a game that we played every night, almost, at the session while we were recording. It was a way to blow off steam at the end of working really hard all day long. Durak is a Russian game where there’s only one loser per round, and that loser is the fool. It’s a game of attack and defense that goes in a circle. The object of the game is to basically get rid of all your cards and the last person with any cards on the table is the fool. There’s a lot of disadvantages for the fool, like they get attacked first. The only right they have is that they’re the ones to decide if you play another round. If you lose the game, it’s your choice if you keep playing another round and have the chance to relinquish your title, because the rounds move pretty quickly.
You end up playing really late into the night, because nobody wants to go to bed as the Durak. You could be the Durak for years until you play another game, so you end up playing till four in the morning. It was just a way to create some adrenaline in the evening. I feel like games like that are analogues for war, to some degree, for all the little dynamics of human nature playing out: strategy, cunningness, building spontaneous allegiances to team up against other people. It’s a very safe space where you can practice all these survival instincts. Bringing it back to that idea of survival and the line between life and death, in the very safe space of a card game, is always an inspiration.
Did it mess with your sleep schedule at all?
It was a bit self-regulating. Because we had two weeks booked straight, everyone was somewhat aware of needing to get some sleep, so even the Durak would call it for the night, knowing that they could relinquish their title the next day. But the last night, when we were done with the record, we played until really late into the night.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
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If London Fashion Week is usually a polite murmur of good taste and better PR, Di Petsa arrived like a soaked siren, dripping symbolism all over the runway and daring everyone to feel something. Preferably desire, but intimidation will also do.
For Fall 2026, Dimitra Petsa went back home for inspiration. Not geographically, but mythologically. To a past that’s always described vaguely enough to feel unquestionable. As with every myth worth recycling, Medusa’s story exists in multiple versions. The one currently having a cultural renaissance goes like this: Medusa, the only mortal of the three Gorgons, essentially the mermaids of their era, was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Since gods rarely face consequences, and Athena couldn’t exactly pick a fight with the sea’s favorite son, Medusa received a new hairstyle instead. Enter the snakes. Half a look could turn you to stone.
Some say Perseus killed her. Some insist her blood could either heal or destroy. Others believe Pegasus was born from her severed neck. What everyone seems to agree on is this: Medusa became so terrifying that she transformed into a symbol of protection. Fear weaponized and desire redirected. “She’s scary but she is this mother figure. I think there’s something just very interesting about her harnessing her female rage, I realized that perhaps I myself had been working with some self-imposed limitations or fears. I wanted to be more empowered in my own design and allow myself to experiment,” Petsa told Vogue.
Somewhere between all the mythology, the show made its point. It doubled as a very relaxed demonstration of how many different directions her made-to-measure work can take. Sheer draped gowns, skin-shredding fabrics, fitted bodices, high collars, and skin-baring menswear, all held tightly onto the brand’s familiar sensuality. Not that anyone needed reminding, those sculptural bottles of Ples’Jour lube placed on every seat did the job well before the guests did.
At London fashion week, sculpting is fashion’s not-so-distant cousin, and floristry is Daniel del Valle’s best friend, maybe baking too, if we’re being generous. Thevxlley’s debut (spelled cryptically for what is, ultimately, the valley), was the natural result. Very original, rooted, and could honestly double as an art exhibition. Whether it’s really wearable is still up to discussion (I’d happily do it, for the record).
The collection was named ‘The Narcissist’ and it was in no rush. The preparation was three years long, and it showed, in the best way possible. Daniel del Valle is a small town guy, a small town near Andalusia’s Seville kind of guy. At 19, he landed in London and survived the classic restaurant grind, until he floated into the florist world with Paul Thomas Flowers, a luxury staple where arranging blooms meets high-end London. At some point he worked with Michaela Stark, underwear that literally bends bodies, (which shows too), before going solo.
With the first note of the grand piano echoing, sitting in a corner of a delicate room at the Ladbroke Hall, what looked more like sculptures than garments started coming down the runway. The opening bodice could pass for armor, if armor wore ribbons and sculpted flowers, a tip of the hat to his grandmother, the one who handed him a needle as a kid. Then came bodices made entirely from little pots, mosaics with a vase here, an ashtray there. At some point, my eyes landed on what I swear were pain de mie, those very French loaves of bread with the impossibly soft crust. Not sure I nailed the category, but bread it was, a piece made in collaboration with his father, a baker back home, of course. This was exactly the moment I thought it couldn’t get any wilder, but boy, was I wrong.
What followed was a trio of silhouettes that could have been urns. The first was ceramic, in a blue-and-white floral pattern that instantly took me to a Greek island. The second was covered in snail shells, taking me from a tropical forest to a Parisian diner. The third took me back to the first. It was structured like a wooden crinoline with tiny vases nestling in its gaps, each blooming with its own flowers, some practically blue-and-white doppelgängers. Seven looks later, and a dress had its very own table. Guess what was on it…
Most of these pieces made me question whether they could survive off the model, but Del Valle cleared it with Vogue, “Ideally, I see the pieces in a gallery space or a museum. I know it’s a fashion collection, but I consider the pieces as sculptures, not garments. And when I designed them, I was also thinking how they would work as an object, not just as clothes.”
How Australians choose to enjoy their leisure time varies greatly depending on their attitude to life and where they might mix socially. Drinks parties aren’t for everyone, mixing and having to endure small talk to keep up appearances. For many, being able to relax in one’s own space is the perfect remedy to forget about life’s stresses, without going anywhere near an alcohol bottle.
Recreational smoking, having obtained quality products from a licensed shop, sometimes online, so that location is no barrier to the enjoyment, is something that is far less taboo than it was to previous generations. Specialist products, such as the quality Bongs Australia produces, are particularly popular among the smoking fraternity, for several sound reasons.
A bong is usually used to smoke cannabis. It consists of a vertical chamber partially filled with water, a bowl where the material is placed, and a stem that connects the bowl to the water chamber. When the material is ignited, and the user inhales through the mouthpiece, smoke is drawn down through the stem, bubbles through the water, and then rises into the main chamber before being inhaled. This cools the smoke and filters out some heavier particles, with the smoke losing some heat and sometimes depositing a portion of ash and residue in the liquid, with many smokers perceiving this as making the experience smoother compared to those who smoke using dry pipes. The cooling effect created by water filtration makes it a particularly popular device, as it feels less harsh on the throat compared to smoke drawn directly from a dry pipe or hand-rolled product, with the bubbling process reducing the immediate heat sensation, adding smoothness.
The partial trapping of heavier particles, such as ash, results in fewer solid particles reaching the mouth. Over time, residue builds up in the water, which reinforces the idea that some material has been filtered out, with bongs allowing smoke to accumulate in the chamber before inhalation. This can create a more concentrated inhalation compared to devices that produce smaller, continuous draws. Some users prefer this because it provides them with a stronger effect in a shorter time. However, it should be noted that stronger inhalations may also increase exposure to harmful substances in a shorter period.
The variety of materials and designs is seen as an attraction of a bong, such as glass, acrylic, and ceramic, with them coming in many different shapes and sizes. Some users enjoy the craftsmanship or aesthetic appeal of glass models, particularly those with intricate designs or added features like percolators. Some buyers see the appeal of a bong in its functionality as well as being a collectable, with design preferences playing a significant role in purchase decisions. Compared to disposable smoking products, bongs are reusable devices, meaning that once purchased, they can be maintained and cleaned repeatedly, making them a sound investment.
Bongs can make the smoking experience smoother and more enjoyable, while using a device that is also visually attractive, which adds to owning one.
Sculpture has a particular kind of presence that many other art forms don’t, occupying space, casting shadows and requesting attention from all angles. Here are six sculptors whose work will help nurture your appreciation for the artistic practice:
Born in Rome to Iraqi artists,Jaber carves in Carrara marble, the same material Michelangelo used, but with very different goals. His figures are distorted, fragmented and deliberately damaged. With the body being used as a metaphor for socio-political dynamics, Jaber’s work tells stories of violence and the fragility of the human form.
Personett earned her MFA in sculpture from the New York Academy of Art and studied stone carving through a residency in Carrara, Italy,before building her career as a portrait sculptor in Brooklyn. She now teaches at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts. Her figurative work – frequently heads and carefully positioned figures – possesses real psychological density.
Trained at Grand Central Atelier in New York, Dufour has an impressive list of large-scale public commissions behind her, including portrait sculptures for the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian and a bust for UC Berkeley. Dufour has a particular gift for capturing raw human expression in three dimensions: forehead wrinkles, the specific tension around the eyes in a moment of grief or longing. Her goal is to achieve balance between “the physical and philosophical, form and concept” in her artwork.
A Hong Kong-based sculptor best known for his porcelain works, Tsang merges realist technique with a surrealist imagination, crafting human faces contorted into extreme expressions or bowls that appear to liquefy at their edges. He was a police officer for over a decade before leaving to work in ceramics full time, and has said that the darkness he encountered on the force left an indelible mark on his creative perspective.
Andrea Blasich @andreblasichsculpture For nearly thirty years, Blasich worked as a sculptor in the film industry,creating character maquettes for DreamWorks, Pixar, Disney and Sony, with credits including Brave and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Born and trained in Milan, he credits classical masters like Michelangelo and Bernini as inspirations, and his personal sculptures carry that same attention to form and weight.
Conn is a figurative sculptor based in Oxfordshire, known for her bronze and bronze resin work, and was selected as the only UK sculptor for Sculpture by the Sea 2025 at Bondi Beach in Australia.She came to sculpture relatively late, discovering it after a period of significant personal difficulty, and went on to complete nearly a decade of academic art education including studies at Central Saint Martins.
Sneha Shrestha, known artistically as IMAGINE, is a Nepali artist whose practice bridges her native Devanagari script with the visual language of graffiti handstyles. Her work advocates for the preservation of living cultures within contemporary art, insisting that language, ritual, and memory remain active and not just archival. Working across painting, murals and sculpture, Shrestha moves fluidly between meditative abstraction and large-scale public intervention.
Her work balances cultural and political concerns with a deep commitment to material and story telling. In some bodies of work, she foregrounds calligraphic repetition drawn from Sanskrit scriptures and immigration documents, transforming language into meditative fields of colour and gesture. In others, she shifts toward architectural scale and sculptural presence, exploring guardianship, migration and belonging through brass, steel and site-responsive installation. Across mediums, her central themes include cultural continuity, diaspora identity and the creation of spaces that foster reflection, protection and pride.
Shrestha’s sculpture Dwarpalika was acquired by the Harvard Art Museums and is currently on long term view. She is the first contemporary Nepali artist to enter the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston with her painting Home416. She is the recipient of the James and Audrey Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. Her public sculpture in Queens, New York, created in partnership with the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art for the New York City Department of Transportation, was recognised by Our Culture magazine as one of five innovative examples of public art. Her monumental sculpture Calling the Earth to Witness was commissioned by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
I have loved painting and drawing for as long as I can remember as a child growing up in Kathmandu. Painting, especially, was something I naturally gravitated toward, which has continued to this day. At the same time, being an artist was not in my vocabulary and I hadn’t yet met an artist, so I didn’t know it was something one can do as a profession. Art was simply something I kept doing because it felt right. The idea that this could be my work came later. What started as instinct slowly became purpose.
Language, especially Nepali and Sanskrit, lies at the heart of your work – as does graffiti. What drew you to script and text as an artistic medium, and how did graffiti culture shape the way you work with mantras and spiritual themes?
Graffiti entered my life through my mentor Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs, who introduced me to murals and lettering at the same time. I did not grow up with graffiti culture in Nepal, so I was learning it from the beginning, with a lot of enthusiasm and curiosity. I was drawn to lettering styles, how artists could stretch and bend forms with colors, giving letters so much personality. Looking at letters as images opened something up for me. At some point I asked myself, what would happen if I wrote in Nepali instead? I learned to write in Nepali before I learned English, so those letterforms come more naturally to me. Stylising Devanagari allowed me to really find my voice and make the work my own.
Over time, I began mixing that foundation with the mindfulness practices I grew up with in Nepal. I slowed down and used more brushwork. Writing the same letter or mantra again and again felt meditative. That evolution led me to the style I work in now.
I want Devanagari to have a presence alongside the aesthetic lettering traditions of the world. These scripts carry centuries of history and are still living languages. They deserve to be seen within contemporary art and public space.
Sneha painting a site-specific installation at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Photo by Jane Louie.
“IMAGINE” is your mother’s name translated into English. Can you talk about choosing this as your artist name?
I chose “IMAGINE” as my artist name because it is a translation of my mother’s name, Kalpana, which means imagination. When I first moved to the United States, I was new, far from home, and I missed my mom deeply. I still do. Taking her name in translation felt like a way to keep her close to my heart while building a life and career in a different country. Signing with her name became a reminder of her strength and of what she instilled in me about the importance of culture.
Your immigration journey clearly shapes your art, particularly the Celebration series. You’ve said it cost you “the most valuable thing in life – time with family.” How do you hope your work transforms the way people see the immigrant experience?
Leaving home meant missing birthdays, rituals, ordinary dinners and the small moments that hold a family together. When I say it cost me the most valuable thing in life, I mean that I can’t take back that time and I am conscious of what had to be given up in order to be where I am.
The Celebration series comes from that place. Each painting layers Nepali calligraphic forms drawn from the names of immigration documents people are required to complete over many years. The colour palettes are inspired by festive clothing worn by my mom during cultural celebrations that took place while the artist was away from home in Kathmandu. Even in her daughter’s absence, my mom continued to uphold traditions, dressing for celebrations and moving through life with dignity and resolve. The paintings carry the love and resilience of our loved ones across immigration distances.
Installation View of Celebration series at Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. Photo by Mel Taing
What has been the proudest moment of your artistic career so far?
Being able to express myself in the most authentic way I can while simultaneously carrying my people with me and doing this as my career… All of it brings me so much joy and pride, so it’s hard to find the “proudest” moment.
I can tell you about my day yesterday, where I spoke about my recently acquired sculpture, Dwarpalika, at the Harvard Art Museums. I felt a lot of pride because the structure of the sculpture is inspired by the arched doorways of temples and traditional Newari homes in Kathmandu. The sculpture includes unsealed brass, a material historically used in ritual objects in Nepal and South Asia. Brass naturally patinas over time and is traditionally polished before important ceremonies. During the acquisition process, we discussed how the museum would care for the work. The brass can oxidise and be polished again, continuing the cycle of renewal that exists in its cultural context. It was important to me that the conversation include not just the preservation of the object, but the preservation of the tradition connected to it.
Museums shape how cultures are seen, understood and valued and… I feel pride that even long after I’m gone, Dwarpalika can contribute to keeping ancient traditions and narratives alive. It is so important for cultural stories to be told from and by the people of the culture.
The title Dwarpalika means temple guardian in Sanskrit, and I think of the work as guarding narratives and living traditions.
Dwarpalika, sculpture recently acquired by the Harvard Art Museums. Photo by Jane Louie
A few months into 2026, are there any artists or exhibitions inspiring you right now?
An exhibition that has deeply inspired me is An Indigenous Present, curated by Jeffrey Gibson and Jenelle Porter at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston. The show brings together Native North American artists working across abstraction in various mediums. There was so much to love about this show: it was powerful to see an artist collaborate with an institution to tell an authentic story. What I loved most is how the exhibition challenges the conventional framing of what is “Indigenous art.” It shows works from elders to emerging artists, showing that cultural lineage and history is not something fixed or archival. I was inspired to think that maybe even more marginalised cultures can be seen in the present moment with ongoing cultural presence and living cultures as parts of active contemporary conversations.
Caroline Monnet’s work especially stood out to me. Monnet engages abstraction and architecture, and creates these visually strong structures that are telling stories from her Indigenous knowledge systems. This really resonated with my own practice.
Mushrooms have always held a significant place in human culture. In parts of Eastern and Northern Europe, autumn mushroom picking is a cosy, community-fostering ritual passed between generations; in the Netherlands, where psilocybin truffles are legally regulated, research continues to explore their therapeutic potential when used in controlled settings. Even in countries like the UK, public curiosity around fungi has grown in recent years.
That renewed fascination is reflected in publishing, too. Books such as Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake have helped bring the intelligence and interconnectedness of fungal networks into mainstream conversation. As science uncovers more about their ecological and psychological significance, artists and photographers have also been turning their attention to the strange beauty of the mushroom world.
Here are four artists placing mushrooms at the centre of their creative practice.
Moritz Schmid is a German photographer and mushroom coach whose Instagram celebrates fungi with meticulously arranged flatlays and forest scenes that highlight their diversity and delicate forms. What makes his work so compelling is the way it marries scientific curiosity and woodland reverence, turning each species into a quiet visual story drawn from his walks and foraging retreats.
California-based Alison Pollack specialises in macro photography of Myxomycetes and fungi, guided by the motto ‘The smaller they are, the more they fascinate me!’. Her work makes the often-overlooked world of mycology feel intimate and quietly luminous. The images are so richly detailed they seem almost painted, each one an argument for looking more closely at the beauty of our natural world.
The artist Kanako has cultivated a creative account that highlights the funky, serene and psychedelic mushroom visuals. She sculpts and paints brightly coloured, shimmery mushroom pendants, often alongside adorable characters.
Mushroom Root’s feed makes you feel like you’ve stepped into a fairytale woodland cottage and been wrapped in a blanket. A self-taught ceramicist who has been at the wheel for over sixteen years, Hannah makes mugs, bowls and decorative pieces that add an enchanting aura to any space, with a frequently recurring mushroom motif. The kind of art you want to appreciate on a slow morning.
We’re on that delicious cusp of winter to spring, slowly stepping away from reading indoors cooped up in a blanket with a cup of tea and inching towards a book on a park bench with your first iced latte of the season (am I getting ahead of myself?). As we bid February farewell, here are four of our favourite book covers released this month. And if you’re guilty of judging books by their covers, you may even feel inspired to read them.
Clutch by Emily Nemens Cover design by Beth Steidle (Tin House/Zando, February 3)
This cover is sparse yet dramatic. The bright red does an excellent job of creating intrigue and swallowing everything up, in contrast to the figure in white who seems to almost dissolve into the background. The image is Wayne Thiebaud’s Supine Woman, chosen by cover designer Beth Steidle, and it’s a smart pairing. The novel follows five college friends, two decades later, navigating the biggest challenges of their lives, and Nemens has described it as an ode to friendship.
They by Helle Helle, translated by Martin Aitken Cover design by Erik Carter (New Directions, 10 February)
Artsy, print-like, crunchy… A scrumptious cover that would double nicely as a large poster in a well-lit flat. The designer behind it is Erik Carter, a New York-based graphic designer and art director whose work draws from video game culture, early digital aesthetics and critical design, and who has made covers and illustrations for the New York Times, The New Yorker and Pitchfork.
Emilio Pucci by Terence Ward and Idanna Pucci
(Macmillan, February 10)
The black and white figure set against those blue-brown tones, the 3D effect of a figure standing in front of a giant letter C, the photograph itself – there’s a lot going on, and it captures your attention. The book inside is equally compelling: a biography that focuses primarily on Pucci’s wartime life, co-written by his niece Idanna Pucci and her husband Terence Ward, following the designer through Nazi-occupied Italy.
How to Disappear and Why by Kyle Minor Cover design by Danika Isdahl (Sarabande, February 24)
This one carries a darker, more ominous energy – the TV-like visuals and eye symbols raise tension and questions immediately. The designer is Danika Isdahl, an award-winning book designer whose cover for Hotel Almighty was selected as an AIGA 2020 50 Books/50 Covers winner, with previous work for authors including Sandra Cisneros.
