As the heatwave takes hold and we reach for our phones to bring swimming plans to life in the group chat, there’s no better time to think about what lies beneath the surface. While most of us are content to float on top, a handful of photographers are diving into some of the world’s most remote and extraordinary marine environments to bring back images that are equal parts science and art. Here are four worth having on your radar:
Matty Smyth
Australia-based Matty Smyth traces his love of the water back to childhood snorkelling trips with his brother along the coasts of France and the Mediterranean. Originally from the UK, he emigrated to Australia in 2007 and has since made the Pacific his playground. A two-time Natural History Museum Wildlife Photographer of the Year award winner and ambassador for Nikon Australia and Aquatica Digital, Smyth sees underwater photography as equal parts wonder and responsibility.
A standout photographer in the industry, Cornwall-based Jane Morgan has built an impressive competition record, taking the Plongeur D’Or (Gold medal) at the Festival Mondial de l’Image Sous Marine in Antibes and the BSOUP (British Society of Underwater Photographers) Underwater Excellence award, as well as earning multiple highly commended honours at British Wildlife Photographer of the Year.
Southern California-born Renee Capozzola brings an unusual double lens to her underwater work — a background in biology and a formative practice in oil painting — and the combination definitely shows. Her images, which specialise in wide-angle and split-level compositions, have earned over fifty international awards, among them Underwater Photographer of the Year 2021, the Female Fifty Fathoms Award through the 2021 Ocean Photography Awards, and first place finishes across the Ocean Geographic Pictures of the Year, the UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition and the Big Picture Natural World Photography Competition, among others.
Of French-Taiwanese descent and raised in the Philippines, Jade Hoksbergen took her first scuba dive at nine years old, and the ocean has shaped everything since. By twenty she was working as a Divemaster in Saint Lucia, developing an eye for elusive marine life that now defines her photography. Recognised as Ocean Fine Art Photographer of the Year in 2023 and runner-up for Ocean Photographer of the Year in 2024, her work appears regularly in publications including New Scientist, Oceanographic Magazine and Scuba Diver.
Jewelry trends keep changing, but many people now want pieces with meaning instead of only sparkle. Fantasy inspired jewelry stands out because it uses storytelling, nature, and artistic details. Forest themes, celestial shapes, and botanical patterns have become common choices. These details help jewelry feel more personal.
Another reason behind this shift is individuality. Buyers often prefer pieces that look different from traditional designs. Natural textures and unique gemstones support that idea. This is where moss agate jewelry fits naturally into the trend.
Best Natural Elements Found In Modern Designs
Nature remains one of the strongest influences in fantasy styles today. Leaf details, branch bands, vines, and floral engravings appear across rings, necklaces, and earrings. These details create a softer appearance without making the design look busy. They also pair well with natural gemstones.
Moss agate jewelry works especially well with these themes. The stone often shows green patterns that resemble forests or landscapes. Because every stone forms differently, each piece looks unique. That natural variation adds character to the jewelry.
Top Moss Agate Jewelry Pieces To Consider
Rings With Woodland Details
Rings remain one of the most popular options in moss agate collections. Many designs include vine bands, leaf accents, and organic textures. These details match the stone’s natural appearance. The result feels artistic but still wearable.
Hexagon cuts, oval shapes, and kite designs are common choices. Some styles keep the setting minimal so the gemstone becomes the focus. Others add small side stones for extra detail.
Necklaces Inspired By Nature
Necklaces work well for people who prefer subtle styling. A moss agate pendant with a simple chain creates an easy everyday look. Nature themes often include floral frames or branch inspired settings. These details add interest without overpowering the stone.
Layering also works nicely with these pieces. Pairing natural gemstones with simple chains creates balance. Neutral outfits help the green tones stand out more clearly.
Best Fantasy Inspired Jewelry Themes Right Now
Woodland Designs
Woodland themes continue growing because they feel calm and timeless. Designs usually include leaves, vines, trees, and earthy gemstones. Yellow gold often appears in these styles because it adds warmth. The combination creates a natural finish.
Fantasy inspired jewelry with woodland elements works well for daily wear. The details feel creative without looking dramatic. Many people choose this style for meaningful gifts and special occasions.
Celestial Details
Stars, moons, and constellation patterns remain popular choices. These designs create a softer fantasy appearance compared to bold mythical themes. Small engraved stars or crescent accents often appear in rings and pendants.
Celestial pieces pair nicely with moonstone, opal, and moss agate jewelry. The mix creates contrast while keeping the design balanced. Small details usually work better than oversized shapes.
Top Ways To Style Moss Agate Jewelry Daily
Simple styling often works best with natural gemstones. Let one statement piece stand out and keep other accessories minimal. A moss agate ring with plain bands creates a clean look. The same idea works for pendants and bracelets.
Earth tones also complement these pieces well. Beige, olive, cream, and soft brown shades match the green inclusions naturally. This creates a cohesive appearance without much effort. Minimal styling keeps attention on the gemstone itself.
Best Metals For Fantasy Inspired Jewelry
Metal choice changes the overall appearance of jewelry. Yellow gold creates warmth and works well with forest themes. Rose gold gives a softer finish and pairs nicely with botanical styles. Silver offers a cooler and more modern look.
Moss agate jewelry adapts easily to different metals. Many people choose yellow gold because it enhances earthy colors. Silver settings often create a cleaner contrast. The final choice depends on personal style.
Top Features To Check Before Choosing A Piece
Comfort should always come first. Rings with lower settings usually feel easier for daily wear. Secure gemstone settings also help protect the piece over time. Slightly thicker bands may provide better durability.
Design balance matters too. Too many details can make jewelry feel crowded. Clean designs often allow fantasy inspired jewelry themes to stand out more naturally. Keeping the focus clear improves the overall look.
Best Ways To Add Meaning Through Custom Details
Personal touches make jewelry more memorable. Engraved initials, dates, or short messages add emotional value. Some people also choose custom stone cuts or special settings. These small changes create unique pieces.
Fantasy inspired jewelry already tells a story through design. Adding personal details strengthens that connection. Moss agate jewelry fits this idea because every gemstone already looks different. No two pieces appear exactly alike.
Why Nature Based Jewelry Keeps Growing
Nature inspired designs continue gaining attention because they feel timeless. People want jewelry that reflects personality and meaningful themes. Forest textures, botanical patterns, and natural stones answer that demand. They create something more personal.
This trend also supports alternative gemstones. Moss agate jewelry keeps growing because of its organic appearance and one of a kind patterns. It feels connected to nature while staying easy to wear.
FAQs
What is fantasy inspired jewelry?
Fantasy inspired jewelry uses themes from nature, stories, celestial symbols, and artistic details to create unique designs.
Why is moss agate jewelry popular?
Its green inclusions resemble natural landscapes, giving every gemstone a different appearance.
Can moss agate jewelry work for everyday wear?
Yes, many people wear rings, necklaces, and pendants daily with simple settings.
Which metal suits moss agate jewelry best?
Yellow gold, rose gold, and silver all work well depending on the style you prefer.
Does fantasy inspired jewelry only suit special occasions?
No, many modern designs are created for daily wear and simple styling.
In this segment, we showcase the most notable albums out each week. Here are the albums out on May 22, 2026:
Bleachers, everyone for ten minutes
Bleachers‘ new album, everyone for ten minutes, contains some of the band’s most uproarious, tangled, and poignant music to date, often in the same breath. Following the Jack Antonoff-fronted band’s 2024 self-titled LP, the record was previewed by the singles ‘i’m not joking’, ‘you and forever’, and the especially ambitious ‘dirty wedding dress’. “It’s very rare that I write from the perspective of an everyone-ness,” Antonoff told NPR. “Obviously, the album is about my personal life, but when I was writing it, I was like, ‘We’ve never disagreed more. We’ve never been more torn apart.’ And yet there’s one core thing that everyone agrees on, which is: this version of modernity is trash. No one’s having a good time.”
Florida-born, New Orleans-based singer-songwriter Thomas Dollbaum has unveiled his new album, Birds of Paradise. Guirarist Josh Halperm, bassist Nick Corson, and MJ Lenderman (drums, guitar, and backing vocals) join him on the LP, which was recorded in Water Valley, Mississippi in 2023 with producer Clay Jones. “Once I sent them the demos – I really only sent them phone recordings,” Dollbaum recalled of the process in our Artist Spotlight interview. “The songs were done, basically. There were a couple things we worked out, but they just have really good ears about what to play, and it’s super fun and collaborative to talk about figuring it out, do a different take or try different things. But we didn’t really change too much.”
Look, I’m biased. In Greek, my last name means “duck.” Growing up, The Ugly Duckling was both one of my favorite and most anxiety-inducing stories. So when Lowertown, a New York duo I’ve interviewedtwice, come out with a concept record about a duckling protagonist and his companions as they attempt to defeat a tyrannical media corporation, you know they’ve got my attention. But while the album is accompanied by a playable Minecraft world, a handbook, plush dolls, and drawn comics by Doctor Nowhere, the focus is still Olivia Osby and Avsha Weinberg’s playfully ramshackle songwriting, which curdles from infatuation to paranoia. It’s great. Subjectively, of course.
Named after a butterfly native to Brazil, Ed O’Brien’s second solo album, Blue Morpho, is sweepingly intricate and gorgeous. The Radiohead guitarist worked on the Earth follow-up with producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Rihanna), enlisting backing vocalists ESKA and Awsa Bergstrom, Estonian composer Tõnu Kõrvits, string players The Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Radiohead drummer Phil Selway, guitarist-bassist Dave Okumu, and jazz luminary Shabaka Hutchings. It was completed between his studio in Wales and The Church Studios in London, with sequencing assistance from Flood and mixing by Ben Baptie.
Mabe Fratti became aware of Bill Orcutt’s music when the veteran improviser released his 2017 self-titled record. “I connected a lot with his music and I had no idea that years later we would be collaborating!” the Guatemalan artist recalled. “It was a total surprise that we started chatting on the internet of collaborating! — we bounced ideas back and forth, all starting with a series of guitar solo stuff that Bill sent me. I had a great time with the pieces and in some of them had the honor to collaborate with I.” The resulting LP, Almost Waking, feels eerily intimate and lived-in. “The album ended up having this nostalgic vibe to it,” Fratti added. “I am so happy on how it turned out and grateful with the crazy coincidence that made it happen!”
Hayden Dunham, a New York-based artist and former PC Music affiliate, is back with a new album under the Hyd moniker. Following her solo debut CLEARING, Hold Onto Me Infinity was primarily recorded while Hyd was doing research in Iceland. Collaborators on the LP include Hudson Mohawke and SOPHIE’S brother Benny Long, while the album cover was shot by Michael Bailey Gates, made without artificial effects using a glass sculpture made by Dunham, pyrotechnics, mirror reflections, and a sunset poking through a pierced window.
fakemink, Terrified; My Precious Bunny, A Moment in My Eyes; Visible Cloaks, Paradessence; Hammock, The Second Coming Was a Moonrise; aja monet, the color of rain; Ali Sethi & Gregory Rogove, Room Jhoom; Aho Ssan, The Sun Turned Black.
Thomas Dollbaum is a New Orleans-based singer-songwriter who grew up in Tampa, Florida. After studying at the University of New Orleans for his MFA in poetry, Dollbaum worked as a carpenter and started writing the songs that became his debut album, 2022’s Wellswood, which he followed up in September 2025 with the Drive All Night EP. Dollbaum’s fantastic new album, Birds of Paradise, was tracked in Water Valley, Mississippi in 2023 with producer Clay Jones and a band that featured guitarist Josh Halperm, bassist Nick Corson, and MJ Lenderman on drums, guitar, and backing vocals. In part because of Lenderman’s involvement, Dollbaum’s music is often associated with the Asheville, North Carolina scene that includes Wednesday, Colin Miller, and Fust, and Birds of Paradise, out today, eventually found a home in the Philadelphia-based label Dear Life Records. But many of the songs on the new album – propulsive, twangy, torch-like – spring from the setting of his childhood, driven to a magically placeless evocation of memory, empathy, and solitude. “What the living do is prowl around on their hands and knees/ Among the bodies we leave behind,” declares one of its characters; another is purely happy to be alive. Dollbaum is always somewhere in between, pooling the feelings together like they’re one and the same.
We caught up with Thomas Dollbaum for the latest edition of our Artist Spotlight series to talk about poetic inspiration, recording Birds of Paradise, working with MJ Lenderman, and more.
I read that part of the inspiration for your new single, ‘Pulverize’, was trying to drive across Louisiana overnight, which made me curious about the relationship between driving and music or inspiration more broadly for you.
I grew up in Florida, and you spend most of your time in a car, it feels like, just because everything’s pretty far away. A lot of stuff I think about is times where I’ve been traveling in the car. That song in particular is actually about driving across Florida, kind of, but I feel like a lot of my memory’s tied to trips in the car and driving; a lot of time to think, too. [laughs] I would say that the majority of time I’m listening to music is probably in the car, just because I don’t really listen at home as much as I’d like to. Sometimes I’ll put on records at the house, but a lot of times, I’m just listening in the car, so that’s the context I get a lot of music in.
How do you think that affects you?
I’m not really sure. Traveling is very intertwined with music to me; they’re kind of one and the same, like liminal spaces. Traveling is its own thing, and music feels that way sometimes.
What memories come to mind of sharing music with friends in the car?
Growing up, if we would drive somewhere, a lot of times we’d make mix CDs, before Spotify. In Florida, we would drive all over the place – wherever we were going, because everybody that I knew lived about a 20-to-30 minute drive minimal, you’re just constantly driving around. It’s just all highway, so basically, your space is on the highway that you’re living on. Even when I go back – because New Orleans is much smaller, it’s a pretty tight-knit city – and I’ll drive back, I’m like, “It can’t be that far, I used to go there all the time.” And it’s a 30-40 minute drive.
There are a couple of instances in Ashleigh Bryant Phillips’ bio that link your songs to short stories – ‘Big Boi’ to ‘Samaritans’ by Larry Brown, ‘Pulverize’ to ‘Time and Again’ by Breece D’J Pancake. I know that’s probably the writer’s connections more than your inspirations, but it made me wonder if short stories or other pieces of literature sometimes feed into your songwriting, or if you’re making some connections afterwards.
Yeah, sometimes. I’ll try to keep a few books of poetry or something around to pick through. It’s not directly related, but I try to read while I’m writing, because it just helps your brain to read. Not particularly any short stories or writing that informed the songs, but I do try to keep reading just to get into thinking in that way.
Thinking poetically?
Yeah. I’ll read some short stories, but I mostly try to read poetry, because I like it more, and it’s also quicker. My attention span’s gotten really bad lately, so it’s nice to go through 4 or 5 poems, and then you can put it down, and you got through something. It’s been hard for me to get through that much fiction recently.
Is it usually something that’s familiar to you and that you’ve read a few times, so that it gets your brain flowing?
Yeah, for sure. That’s what I’d try to do, especially if I’m stuck. Sometimes songs will come really quick, and sometimes it’ll take a long time. But instead of focusing on something, making your brain think about something else – when you come back to it, it can sometimes open up the ways to the song.
Do you remember any of the poetry collections you had lying around?
Yeah, my old professor has a book, Still Life. His name’s Jay Hopler. I was reading some Philip Levine, too, What Work Is. I can’t remember the other ones right off the top of my head, but I like those a lot. I keep those around.
Having the lyric sheet made me appreciate the poetic structure of your lyrics, like the line break in “And in the deep of the dark/ Thing that sparks your heart to bark out at the moon.” When you’re working on lyrics, do you sometimes disassociate the words from any idea of music or performance that might come later?
I definitely do focus on lyrics more. I usually get the melody line first, and then I try to fit it to the form of the lyrics. But it’s kind of a puzzle where you don’t want to just write anything that sounds like it’s gotta mean something, but if it’s too fitting to the lyrics, it can be kind of boring musically. It’s a balance of trying to figure out what works, because sometimes you can’t fit exactly what you want to say. Some people do that differently, but I like to just try to focus on the melody, and then make the lyrics kind of fit to it, or kind of work… work to that, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. It sounds like that’s still… Kind of at least something hanging around in your mind. It’s never completely words on a page.
I also thought it was funny that Jake Lenderman sings on that track, and he’s got a song called ‘Bark at the Moon’.
We did that before I’d heard his record, which is funny. We recorded this record maybe two and a half years ago now, so I hadn’t heard Manning Fireworks yet. He sent it to me right after we did this session. He was like, “I’m finishing up this record,” and sent it to me. And then I heard that, and I was like, “Damn.” Just a coincidence.
Tell me more about getting him involved in the process. I know you met around the time Boat Songs came out, and then he wore your shirt at his Tiny Desk concert. What was the back and forth like after that?
We met in North Carolina. He came to one of my shows pretty early, when my first record came out, and I think Boat Songs hadn’t been out yet. We just became pretty good friends, and then I liked a lot of his music, he liked mine, and we kept in touch. When you travel and tour, you just end up making friends with a bunch of people on the road. My guitar player on this record, Josh Halper, was also on Dear Life Records, so everybody was on that. Jake had me play the Boat Songs release show, and I came up to Asheville, so we hung out. I’d done the EP and I wanted to do a full-band record, and Josh was like, “It’d be cool if Jake played drums on it,” because I’d heard him do the Indigo de Souza record. I was like, “It’d just be fun to all hang.” That’s kind of how it happened. I had a fun week with them.
How did the collaboration make you think about harmonies differently? ‘Waterbirds’ is one that stood out to me in terms of your vocal chemistry.
He’s just a really great singer. He’s got a really good ear for melody. Basically, we got done with the session, and then we were listening back, and he was like, “Oh, I hear something on ‘Coyote’ I could do.” So he did the backing vocals on ‘Coyote’, and then I was like, “Do you want to do any more?” That was the only thing we really overdubbed, so he did those later, and I sent him those songs. His voice is great, and he has a great ear for melody and harmony.
You wrote the songs in three months, and the recording period was four days. What surprised you about funneling the writing into that sort of pressurized, collaborative environment?
It was super fun. Luckily, I just had a really good group of musicians, so it really was pretty seamless. Once I sent them the demos – I really only sent them phone recordings. The songs were done, basically. There were a couple things we worked out, but they just have really good ears about what to play, and it’s super fun and collaborative to talk about figuring it out, do a different take or try different things. But we didn’t really change too much. Every once in a while, something would change up, like for ‘Rabbits’, I think Jake was like, “We should do it a little faster.” But we spent the time mostly figuring the songs out and then recording them pretty fast. I have some of the old demos, and they’re pretty much the same – maybe just a different tempo, maybe the endings are a little different here or there, but that was basically it.
Apart from figuring the songs out, did you talk about them at all? How do you generally feel about discussing or sharing songs before they’re done?
That was pretty much unspoken. We didn’t really talk about the songs too much, honestly. Until a song is done, I don’t really like showing people songs. Unless I’m working on a song with somebody collaboratively, I just want to have my own space to figure out what I’m trying to do. If you show people stuff, they give suggestions or ideas, and I don’t really want that. [laughs] I don’t mind if it’s good suggestions, but I never really ask anybody about lyrics. It’s a very solo process, the writing.
It feels like with most of the songs, there’s a kernel of personal truth, and then you build these stories out of them. But I get the sense that those tracks that are most autobiographical, or with bigger kernels of truth, are rooted in your upbringing or youth in some way.
The way I thought about the record, it’s definitely in a setting of my youth. I don’t know how much of it’s really real – some of it is and some of it’s not, but it’s just written from that space that I know just from growing up. It’s just in that time period in my mind, but I don’t know if it’s specifically true to my life or something.
And I don’t think it really matters that much, but it is interesting to recognize that as a setting, a kind of familiar space that you can get imaginative around. That’s something I feel you set up with the opening track and the line “The older I get, the more I do magical thinking,” which is funny, because on the next song, there’s an instance of doing magical thinking as a kid.
Yeah, I wrote both those songs kind of at the same time, so they’re really tied. That’s kind of why I did them in that order. But I think that’s a good way to look at it, that’s kind of how I was framing it. I think that usually what’ll happen when I’m working on stuff is I have a framework I’m working the songs in, and then one or two will stick out as kind of the ones that frame the rest of the songs. Everything will kind of be very different, like I approach them differently, and then they work their way together. I wrote those first two first, but I’d been working on the other ones in a different way, and then they all came together. But everything’s always connected somehow in your brain.
Not to get too lyrical about it, but “Wish I could save us from the mundane” is another line that felt like part of the album’s framework — that emotional, empathetic voice that jumps out in different circumstances.
I don’t really think about it, but I try to keep some sort of empathy in all the things that I write. I guess it’s overall maybe a sentimental record, so I try to keep that in mind. I don’t really want to write too cynical or something.
Thinking about “I’ve only been screaming in the back of my head,” I’m curious what your relationship to your voice was like with this record.
Because we did it live, it definitely was a lot easier to push vocally. Sometimes when you’re recording and overdubbing and doing a vocal take, it’s just hard to get the energy of a full band like that. I think a lot of that translated, and it was a fun setting to sing pretty strongly, comparatively. Even with the EP, I did that mostly acoustic, and it’s just really hard to be in a room alone and be pushing. It’s a little more intimate when you’re just singing in headphones compared to a live performance.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Thomas Dollbaum’s Birds of Paradise is out now via Dear Life Records.
Starting an art collection is becoming increasingly popular, even for those working with a smaller budget. Many people are discovering that collecting art does not require large investments or formal training. According to House & Garden, art collecting beginners are encouraged to start with pieces they genuinely enjoy, explore affordable options such as prints and emerging artists, and build collections gradually over time. This accessible approach has opened the door for more homeowners to engage with art in meaningful ways.
As collections grow, the question becomes how to display these pieces effectively. Curio cabinets offer a practical and elegant solution. They provide structure, protection, and visual appeal, making them ideal for transforming a simple collection into a curated home gallery.
A Brief History of Curio Cabinets
Curio cabinets have a long and fascinating history that adds to their appeal as display furniture. As explained by glass restoration experts Flickinger Glass, the origin of the curio cabinet can be traced back to 15th-century Europe during the Renaissance, when collectors used cabinets to showcase rare books and valuable objects. These early pieces reflected a growing interest in exploration and discovery, as travelers returned with unique items from around the world.
By the 18th century, curio cabinets had become popular among the English gentry. Crafted from fine woods and featuring curved glass panels, they allowed viewers to admire collections from multiple angles. This combination of craftsmanship and display made them both functional and decorative.
During the Victorian era, curio cabinets gained widespread popularity in America. They became a common feature in households, used to display porcelain, silverware, and family heirlooms. Today, these cabinets continue to hold both sentimental and aesthetic value. They remain a timeless way to present cherished items while adding character to interior spaces.
Organizing Your Collection with Purpose
One of the most important aspects of creating a personal art gallery is a sense of coherence. Curio cabinets provide a defined space that helps structure a collection, making it easier to arrange and display items thoughtfully.
Start by grouping similar pieces together. This could be based on style, medium, or color palette. For example, ceramic sculptures can be displayed on one shelf, while framed miniatures or prints can occupy another. This approach creates a sense of order and allows each piece to stand out.
Adjustable shelves in many curio cabinets make it possible to accommodate different sizes and shapes. This flexibility ensures that the display can evolve as the collection grows. By organizing items carefully, homeowners can create a balanced and visually appealing arrangement.
Creating Thematic Displays
Thematic displays are a powerful way to give a collection a cohesive identity. Curio cabinets make it easy to curate themes that reflect personal interests or artistic preferences.
A theme could focus on a specific era, such as modern art or vintage pieces. It could also be based on a subject, such as nature, travel, or abstract design. By selecting items that align with a chosen theme, the display becomes more intentional and engaging.
Lighting also plays an important role in enhancing thematic displays. Many curio cabinets include built-in lighting or allow for the addition of small fixtures. Proper lighting highlights details and draws attention to key pieces, making the display more dynamic.
The result is a collection that feels curated rather than random. This approach transforms the cabinet into a storytelling element within the home.
Adding Structure to Art Presentation
Curio cabinets bring structure to art presentation by framing and containing the collection within a defined space. This structure helps create a gallery-like effect, even in smaller rooms.
The glass panels of a curio cabinet act as a visual boundary, separating the display from the rest of the room while still allowing full visibility. This creates a sense of focus, encouraging viewers to appreciate the items inside.
Shelving further enhances this structure by dividing the display into sections. Each shelf becomes a stage for individual pieces or groupings, making it easier to highlight specific items. This organized layout mirrors the way art is presented in professional galleries, adding a level of sophistication to the home.
Enhancing Elegance Through Design
Curio cabinets add a sense of elegance to any interior. Their materials, craftsmanship, and design details contribute to their appeal as both functional furniture and decorative elements.
Wood finishes, glass panels, and intricate detailing create a refined look that complements a wide range of interior styles. Whether placed in a living room, dining area, or hallway, a curio cabinet can serve as a focal point that elevates the overall design of the space.
The transparency of the glass allows the art to remain the center of attention while the cabinet itself enhances the presentation. This balance between display and design is what makes curio cabinets particularly effective for showcasing art.
Adapting Displays Over Time
A personal art gallery is not static. Collections evolve as new pieces are added and tastes change. Curio cabinets support this evolution by providing a flexible display solution.
Items can be rearranged to reflect new themes or highlight recent additions. Seasonal changes can also influence the display, allowing homeowners to refresh their space throughout the year. This adaptability keeps the collection engaging and relevant.
By regularly updating the arrangement, homeowners can maintain a sense of creativity and discovery within their own space. This ongoing process adds to the enjoyment of collecting art.
A Timeless Way to Showcase Art
Curio cabinets offer a unique combination of functionality and beauty, making them an ideal choice for displaying art at home. They provide organization, support thematic curation, and add structure to presentations, all while enhancing the elegance of a space.
As more people embrace art collecting, curio cabinets continue to play an important role in how collections are displayed and appreciated. Their history, versatility, and timeless design ensure that they remain a valuable addition to any home.
By using curio cabinets thoughtfully, homeowners can create personal galleries that reflect their tastes and tell their stories, turning everyday spaces into meaningful and visually engaging environments. For more art trends, do visit our lifestyle page.
There was a time when the Valentino Rockstud heel was physically impossible to avoid. It showed up at weddings, fashion week, brunch, airports, and roughly every Instagram flat lay posted between 2012 and 2017. Then fashion collectively decided the shoe was dated, which in trend-cycle language usually means too many women outside Lower Manhattan bought it. Since then, the shoe has occupied a strange position in fashion culture. Not timeless enough to be universally respected, not tacky enough to fully die. Just permanently trapped between iconic and deeply embarrassing. I’ve changed my mind about it more times than I can count.
The shoe made its debut in Valentino’s Autumn/Winter 2010-11 collection under Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, who, at the time, turned to Roman architecture. The brand’s hometown wasn’t exactly short on ancient hardware or Renaissance detailing. Sarah Jessica Parker, Miranda Kerr, Jennifer Lopez, the Kardashians, and everyone who came wrapped in the 2010s magazines, lipsticks and perfume samples tucked inside glossy issues, quickly fell into the Valentino scene. Even Meryl Streep looked back at that studded era, at least as Miranda Priestly.
Alessandro Michele’s Pre-Fall 2026 takes the heel back home in a campaign seen through Johnny Dufort’s lens and Shayne Laverdière’s creative direction, and makes it pose inside fountains, surrounded by running water and marble, with Les Filles Désir by Vendredi sur Mer playing in the background. The spirit remains, even if the form doesn’t. The silhouette shifts into an elongated square toe, embellished with a metallic cap and complete with the familiar insole. They arrive in two heel heights and a palette of nude, blue, green, black, and white, while the sandals add red as if to remind everyone this is still Valentino.
Nancy Bowen is a mixed media artist known for her eclectic mixtures of imagery and materials in both two and three dimensions.
Bowen has had solo shows in the United States and Europe including the Annina Nosei Gallery, Lesley Heller Gallery in NYC, Farideh Cadot Gallery in Paris, and the James Gallery in Houston. She has won awards from the NEA and NYFA and she received an Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2017. She has had residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, Jentel and the Dora Maar House among others. In 2023 she published a collaborative book with the poet Elizabeth Willis called Spectral Evidence: The Witch Book. She is a Professor Emerita of Sculpture at Purchase College, S.U.N.Y.
She is represented by Nunu Fine Art, NYC and Taipei, where her show “A to Z and the Bodies in Between” will be up from June 5 through July 25 in NYC.
Our Culture had the chance to talk to Nancy Bowen about a practice built from the ground up — ceramics layered with porcupine quills and coral, dictionaries dismantled and colour-coded and craft traditions put to new use.
When did you first realise that art was the path you wanted to dedicate your life to? Was there a specific moment, or did it come gradually?
Since I was a small child, I consistently made things with my hands but I did not necessarily identify them as art. I drew a lot but I also had many other interests and curiosities. I did not grow up with an awareness of art as a life possibility. In college during an architecture class critique, I was shamed by a teacher for what I thought was an incredibly creative response to a landscape design assignment. After verbally humiliating me and my project which I had created from a variety of carved green vegetables, he ended his tirade by saying I should go to the art department if I wanted to make things “like that”. I then dropped out of college and moved to Chicago to live with a friend and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I took a ceramics class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and by the end of the semester, it turned out the grumpy architecture professor was right. I knew I had found my tribe and my true purpose in life.
Since 2015, you’ve been working with early to mid-twentieth century dictionaries found in your parents’ home. What was it about finding those specific books that first sparked the idea, and what does it feel like to work with something personally inherited?
I have long been interested in working with different systems of information and I was particularly captivated by the beautiful engravings that illustrated these early twentieth century dictionaries. Also it was a bit of a practical decision — I tried giving the books away but nobody wants physical books, and I couldn’t bear to put them all in a dumpster. So I decided to use them for collages. Previously, I had made collages using reference books from my parents’ library in which I responded to their inherent patriarchal bias. It was fun and easy (sadly) to make visual incursions on sexist texts. I did not approach the dictionaries from an overtly feminist point of view. Instead I tried to visually upend the traditional hierarchical approach to presenting alphabetical information. I treated each dictionary differently but tried to create an experience that was more visual than textual. For instance, I would color-code the pages by nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. This would create a pattern and a palette that I would then respond to with another set of rules like connecting each image to the next with a series of dots. Each layer of actions would add another type of logic and associations to the dictionary. These actions created a visual cacophony that a viewer could choose to decipher or simply enjoy. Finally, I would add a layer of koans or aphorisms to each collage. I chose words that were found on the page and combined them to make provocative phrases that often commented on the oppressive tactics of our current American government. I think of this as a way to use history to point out the ills of the present and point to a better future.
Ravishing Spiral, 2024, collage and gouache on found book on rice paper
Works like Sentinel and From the Deep incorporate porcupine quills, coral and shells alongside ceramic. How do you decide which materials belong to a particular piece?
In this series, I usually start a sculpture by making an organic ceramic form that evokes a body fragment. I then work in a call and response fashion and using contrasting materials and forms. I do not have a predetermined image in my head. I do have a feeling or attitude or emotion that I want to convey. I add various materials or objects and I know it is right when I see it. In the case of the porcupine quills, I was thinking about that piece as having an elegant but prickly personality. While the pieces are resolutely abstract, when I am making choices about materials and forms I affectionately think of them as a group of women. So, in Sentinel the beaded rope sashes indicates a kind of elegance and the quills exude a prickly danger. Look but don’t touch! I want the pieces to exist in a kind of unfamiliar territory where the viewer can feel like they are seeing something they do not recognise but parts of it feel familiar. I was inspired to make From the Deep by the memory of an ancient terracotta Aphrodite sculpture I had seen years ago. The tiny goddess was emerging from a large terracotta shell. I remade my own version of her and decided to use real shells. I like the way the shells are both symbolic and indexical of place — the sea in this case. I also was interested in the way the patterns of the shells and the patterns of the rocks created an abstraction of landscape — the rocks being the shore and the shells being the water. While that may not be obvious to the viewer I think it works subliminally.
Fossils of Desire, 2026, ceramic, foam, sand, shells, beads, glitter and fishbones
There’s a tension in your sculptures between the structural solidity of ceramic and the more delicate, organic quality of the handmade and found materials layered onto it. What does that tension mean to you in terms of how bodies — specifically female bodies — are understood?
The sculptures evoke a corporal experience without visually describing it. I am interested in setting up analogous situations that echo what it feels like to be in a female body which is not always an easy experience and is not the same for everyone. I think of the parts of the sculptures that are attached to the ceramic form almost as clothing. Sometimes the clothes function like jewellery and sometimes like armour. Again, I want to emphasize that I think of these sculptures as abstract pieces and what I am describing is an undercurrent that functions more on an unconscious level of understanding. The tensions and contrasts you mention give the pieces their formal energy and that is really important.
Your collages and sculptures are shown together as complementary bodies of work, yet they’re very different in form and process. Do they develop in conversation with each other, or do they tend to live in separate creative headspaces?
The sculptures and the collages do live in separate headspaces but they both share a desire to change up a familiar structure. And they are both made through additive processes. I also think my sense of colour and love of tactility shows through in both bodies of work. In the collages I am dealing with textual and linguistic problems and in the sculpture I am trying to create a more visceral experience. Those two activities draw from very different parts of my brain and consciousness. It has taken me a long time to be comfortable with the fact that I do have these two separate but complementary bodies of work. But I think that is one of the beauties of being an artist — I feel like we get to make our own rules.
Sea Song, 2023, glazed ceramic, foam, sand, found objects and silver leaf, coral
Your work actively revives ornament and craft traditions that you’ve described as “often disappearing.” What draws you to those traditions, and do you see yourself as preserving them or transforming them into something new?
My interest in these traditions began with an early exposure to Pattern and Decoration from my Feminist teachers when I was a student. I was also really interested in non-Western art which led me to the sources of much of that pattern and decoration. At heart, I am a maker and I love to learn new skills. Over the years, I have learned to make mosaics, work with glass, do beadwork, make baskets and so on. Many of these traditional crafts are now being made by machines or not at all. In the past decade or so there has been somewhat of a revival of crafts like embroidery or basket-making spurred by Feminist and Indigenous artists.
I think it is important to keep the physical knowledge of making current and pass it along to the next generation. For years I was an educator and felt a very strong mission to teach young women in particular how to work with materials.
I have a personal anecdote in terms of my use of beads. I first learned to use beads from my grandmother who made beautiful beaded purses that were popular in Edwardian times. My grandmother was an incredibly creative woman who might have been an artist had she lived in an a more enlightened era. Her creativity manifested itself in the socially acceptable domestic crafts like making beaded purses, painted trays, and other domestic objects. She taught me how to make the beaded purses and when she died, I got her beads. However, one day I decided to try to use the beads as structural elements rather than decorative elements. I strung them on strong wire and wove them like a basket to create an open weave organic form. It was an interesting transformation of a traditional craft material into a new usage. I like to approach materials like science experiments where I don’t know what the outcome will be but I create something I haven’t seen before.
Habitable Iceberg, 2025, gouache and glitter on found book on rice paper
Is there a piece of art that you’ve felt particularly inspired by lately?
I took a trip to Cambodia last fall and I am still absorbing the impact of what I saw. The architectural ruins of Angkor Watt and the Khmer sculpture were mind blowing. Most of the sculpture is religious; the figures have an incredible gravitas and presence while exuding a mysterious spiritual energy. The decorative elements were also really gorgeous and perfectly integrated into the larger figural forms. The architectural sites were so complex and sophisticated and filled with symbolism in their arrangements. I have no idea how or if the experience will affect my own work but it is all still rambling around in my brain.
On ‘drop dead’, the lead single from you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, Olivia Rodrigo flexed, “You know all the words to ‘Just Like Heaven’/ And I know why he wrote them.” Today, she’s released ‘the cure’, the album’s striking second single. Maybe she’ll perform it with the Cure’s Robert Smith one day? The track comes paired with a music video directed by Cat Solen and Jamie Gerin, which you can check out below.
you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love comes out June 12. Earlier this month, Rodrigo debuted an unreleased song, ‘Begged’, on Saturday Night Live, with backing from Weyes Blood.
Earlier this year, photographer and curator Jingyi Yu served as the sole juror forNew Year, New [Me]ntal Issues, a group exhibition at A Space Gallery that looked at the emotional weight surrounding contemporary creative life. The exhibition, which closed in late February, moved away from the idea of the new year as a clean reset. Instead, it focused on the feeling that many artists know well: the pressure keeps going. Deadlines return, financial stress lingers, and creative exhaustion does not suddenly disappear just because the calendar changes.
What made the exhibition notable was not simply its subject matter, but its tone. The works resisted dramatic narratives of collapse or recovery. Instead, the exhibition stayed with quieter feelings — the sense of being stuck, emotionally worn down, unable to fully move forward, yet still expected to continue producing. Across painting, sculpture, installation, and artist books, mental health appeared less as confession and more as something woven into the atmosphere of contemporary creative life itself.
Following the strong response to New Year, New [Me]ntal Issues, A Space Gallery now presents Not for Sale, a new exhibition curated by Jingyi Yu and Qi Ling, opening May 24. While the earlier exhibition stayed close to emotional exhaustion and creative burnout, Not for Sale looks more directly at the conditions surrounding contemporary creative life — the constant pressure to produce, stay visible, and turn artistic practice into something useful.
The exhibition begins with a question that feels increasingly difficult to avoid within contemporary art: what kinds of work survive when artists stop trying to make themselves useful?
Today, artists are often expected to function simultaneously as creators, marketers, public personalities, and content machines. Work is constantly asked to justify itself. Can it be exhibited? Posted? Sold? Turned into visibility? Even deeply personal artistic gestures are quickly absorbed into professional performance and self-branding. Under these conditions, creative practice can begin to feel inseparable from optimization itself.
Not for Sale pushes against that logic.
Built around an international open call that received nearly one hundred submissions from artists across the United States, China, Korea, and Europe, the exhibition centers work created outside strategic intention or commercial ambition. According to the curatorial statement, the exhibition is interested in “the work that simply saved you” — pieces made privately, impulsively, emotionally, or without any expectation of audience at all. The exhibition brings together artists working across disciplines, including London-based artist and animator Marian Obando, a graduate of the MA Character Animation program at Central Saint Martins. Obando’s work has been exhibited internationally at venues and festivals including Mall Galleries in London, Animafest Zagreb, Animation Block Party in New York, and the Holland Animation Film Festival, and her recent recognitions include the 2026 Aesthetica Art Prize Longlist and Jackson’s Art Prize Longlist.
The result is not an exhibition about polished achievement, but one shaped by emotional residue. Unfinished sketches, abandoned experiments, strange visual fragments, deeply personal gestures, and works considered “too weird,” “too unresolved,” or “too personal” for public circulation become central to the exhibition’s framework. Rather than treating those qualities as weaknesses, Yu and Ling position them as evidence of something increasingly difficult to preserve: honesty without performance.
Importantly, Not for Sale does not romanticize incompletion or rawness. The exhibition avoids the exaggerated anti-commercial rhetoric that often becomes its own kind of aesthetic posture. Its resistance feels quieter than that. The exhibition seems less interested in rejecting the art world altogether than in protecting certain fragile ways of making from being absorbed by it.
That restraint is part of what makes the project feel timely. In recent years, conversations surrounding burnout and creative exhaustion have become increasingly visible, particularly among younger artists navigating precarious economies and constant digital exposure. Yet even those conversations are often quickly turned back into content or another form of self-presentation. Not for Sale appears deeply aware of that tension.
Rather than turning vulnerability into spectacle, the exhibition creates space for uncertainty and contradiction to remain unresolved. Many artists have bodies of work that never enter public view precisely because they do not function neatly within institutional or commercial structures. Some works feel too emotionally exposed. Others feel directionless or impossible to explain. Not for Sale asks whether those works might reveal something essential precisely because they resist clarity and usefulness.
Across both exhibitions, Yu’s curatorial approach stays close to the emotional realities of contemporary creative life, especially the quiet exhaustion that comes from constantly needing to continue producing.
At a time when contemporary art increasingly overlaps with branding culture and self-performance, Not for Sale offers something slower and more difficult to quantify. Rather than treating art as evidence of success, the exhibition approaches creative practice as something personal, unstable, and at times necessary simply because it helps people keep going.
In that sense, the exhibition’s title feels less like a declaration than a form of protection.
AI writing has entered its less flashy, far more useful era. The first wave made everyone ask whether machines could write. The next wave asks a better question: how can writers use AI without flattening their taste, rhythm, or judgment?
That is why the blank page feels different in 2026. A writer can now test an angle, sketch an outline, polish a sentence, check an AI signal, and organize research before the kettle cools. The best tools act like parts of a working desk. Some help you start. Some help you shape. Some help you catch the awkward lines your tired brain stopped seeing.
The smartest setup depends on the job, but these seven tools show where writing software is heading.
Detector.io
Detector.io earns the first place because AI-assisted writing now needs a final reading layer. Writers may use AI for ideas, edits, or structure, then still need to know how the finished text might be read by a detector. The fast AI checker by Detector.io helps with that last stage by showing AI, mixed and human signals with sentence-level insight.
That makes it useful for students, bloggers, editors, and anyone handling sensitive copy. It works best with context. Used well, it helps writers spot text that sounds too polished, stiff, or predictable.
For writers who want a quick final review, its strongest uses are clear:
Checks AI signals before final edits;
Gives sentence-level feedback;
Helps with academic, blog, and client work;
Works best with human review.
ChatGPT
ChatGPT remains the flexible starting point for writers who need to move fast. It can turn a rough topic into angles, outlines, headlines, examples, or draft options. For many people, that is enough to kill blank page panic before it grows teeth.
Its real value comes from conversation. You can push it, reject an idea, ask for a sharper version, change the tone, or test several openings. This makes it especially useful during messy early thinking. It is one of the generative AI tools that feels strongest when the writer stays active instead of accepting the first answer.
That active back-and-forth makes ChatGPT useful in several parts of the writing process:
Builds outlines from rough ideas;
Helps test titles and angles;
Rewrites in different tones;
Needs clear prompts and editing.
Grammarly
Grammarly sits in the quieter part of the workflow, where a draft becomes cleaner and easier to read. It helps with grammar, tone, clarity, and sentence-level fixes that matter when text moves from private draft to public page.
For writers tracking AI writing tools updates 2026, Grammarly also shows how editing software has become more context-aware. It can support emails, reports, articles, and everyday online writing without forcing the writer into a separate workspace. That convenience matters. The tool works best after the main idea already exists, when the task is smoothing, tightening, and making the copy less clumsy.
Its value shows up most clearly during the polishing stage:
Catches grammar and clarity issues;
Supports tone adjustments;
Works across common writing spaces;
Suits final polish and daily writing.
Sudowrite
Sudowrite belongs to fiction writers, which makes it different from the usual productivity crowd. It is built for scenes, description, character movement, and story momentum. A novelist stuck in a slow chapter may need a sensory nudge instead of a business template. Sudowrite understands that problem.
It can help generate scene options, expand a moment, suggest twists, or loosen a passage that feels wooden. The author still has to guard the voice and plot logic. Fiction punishes lazy automation quickly. Still, as a creative companion, Sudowrite gives storytellers a way back into the scene when the page feels cold.
For fiction writers, the tool is most useful when the draft needs motion again:
Supports fiction and scene work;
Helps expand description;
Suggests story directions;
Needs strong author control.
Jasper
Jasper fits writers who work inside marketing systems. Think landing pages, campaign copy, product messaging, email sequences, and repeatable brand content. It is one of the best AI tools for content writers who need speed without turning every assignment into a blank restart.
The useful part is consistency. A content team can work with brand voice, campaign goals, and familiar formats, then use Jasper to create usable starting material.
That makes Jasper especially useful for writers working with recurring content formats:
Supports marketing and brand copy;
Helps with campaign drafts;
Speeds up repeatable content tasks;
Needs editing for voice and nuance.
Notion AI
Notion AI is for writers whose ideas live in messy notes before they become drafts. It helps turn research fragments, meeting notes, content plans, and scattered thoughts into something easier to use.
This is useful for freelance work, editorial calendars and research-heavy articles. It can summarize notes, suggest outlines, and make a cluttered project feel less foggy. Among AI tools for freelance writer workflows, Notion AI is strongest when organization is half the battle.
Its best features support the planning stage before the actual writing begins:
Turns notes into outlines;
Helps organize research;
Supports content planning;
Works best inside an existing Notion setup.
Claude
Claude is strong for long-form work that needs patience. It can help with essays, reports, narrative drafts, and complex revisions where structure matters as much as sentence polish.
It also fits student and academic-adjacent workflows, especially when paired with responsible review habits and source checking. That is why it can sit near AI study tools in a writer’s stack, though research and original thinking stay with the writer. Claude is useful when the problem is depth, patience, and structure.
For writers handling longer pieces, Claude works best in these areas:
Helps with long-form drafts;
Supports structure and argument flow;
Useful for deep revisions;
Requires fact-checking and source review.
Conclusion
The blank page has lost its old drama. In 2026, writers can build a stack that matches the work stage. ChatGPT and Claude help ideas form. Grammarly cleans the copy. Sudowrite supports fiction. Jasper handles marketing pressure. Notion AI organizes the mess before drafting. Detector.io adds a final check when AI signals matter.
The best writing still comes from taste and judgment. AI simply gives writers a faster way into the work.
Florida-born, New Orleans-based singer-songwriter 
Look, I’m biased. In Greek, my last name means “duck.” Growing up, The Ugly Duckling was both one of my favorite and most anxiety-inducing stories. So when Lowertown, a New York duo I’ve 
Named after a butterfly native to Brazil, Ed O’Brien’s second solo album, 
Mabe Fratti became aware of Bill Orcutt’s music when the veteran improviser released his 2017 self-titled record. “I connected a lot with his music and I had no idea that years later we would be collaborating!” the Guatemalan artist recalled. “It was a total surprise that we started chatting on the internet of collaborating! — we bounced ideas back and forth, all starting with a series of guitar solo stuff that Bill sent me. I had a great time with the pieces and in some of them had the honor to collaborate with I.” The resulting LP, Almost Waking, feels eerily intimate and lived-in. “The album ended up having this nostalgic vibe to it,” Fratti added. “I am so happy on how it turned out and grateful with the crazy coincidence that made it happen!”
Hayden Dunham, a New York-based artist and former PC Music affiliate, is back with a new album under the Hyd moniker. Following her solo debut CLEARING, Hold Onto Me Infinity was primarily recorded while Hyd was doing research in Iceland. Collaborators on the LP include Hudson Mohawke and SOPHIE’S brother Benny Long, while the album cover was shot by Michael Bailey Gates, made without artificial effects using a glass sculpture made by Dunham, pyrotechnics, mirror reflections, and a sunset poking through a pierced window.
