A Textile Safari

Elaborate Textile 'Collages' of African Wildlife by Sophie Standing With a background in woodwork, ceramics, weaving, dressmaking, and even stained glass windows, artist Sophie Standing consolidates her breadth of talent in these explosively colorful textile collages of animals and insects. To create each piece she first paints or sketches on fabric and then draws from a vast collection of decorative fabrics acquired from her travels around the world to create a dense patchwork of color and texture. The artwork is then finished with dense line work applied with a sewing machine.   Humorous Urban Interventions on the Streets of France by OakOak Based in the old industrial town of St. Etienne, France, street artist oakoak relies on a keen sense of observation to create his humorous interventions on walls, streets, and sidewalks. Cracks and crumbling infrastructure become the backdrop for superheroes and other pop culture characters who interact with their surroundings in unexpected ways.     A Jellyfish Tank Installed in an Abandoned Building in Liverpool by Walter Hugo & Zoniel Residents of Liverpool, England must have been surprised and confused when, last month, as the evening set in, the shutters of an old derelict building autonomously opened, emanating a bluish glow onto the street. What was revealed behind the old garage door was a space completely taken over by a large fish tank filled with jellyfish peacefully floating and hovering in the gentle blue water. This secret magical window, which only opens at night is, in fact, a large-scale, site-specific art installation by the artist duo Walter Hugo & Zoniel.   New Lifelike Paper Birds by Diana Beltran Herrera Year after year, artist and designer Diana Beltran Herrera continues to astound with her near perfectly accurate reproductions of birds made from paper.   A Sculptural Cloud of Plastic Bottles Illustrates One Hour of Trash in NYC If you visited Governor's Island in New York last summer you most certainly saw the billowing, cloud-like structure that sits in the middle of the lawn. But it's not until you get up close that you realize it's made from many, many plastic bottles stringed together. "53,780 used plastic bottles," says Jason Klimoski, the designer of the structure, "the number thrown away in NYC in just 1 hour."   Stop-Motion Animation of Wood Cut Millimeter by Millimeter Creates Waves that Ripple Like Water Waves of Grain is a two minute strata-cut animation by filmmaker Keith Skretch who planed a block of wood in tiny increments and took photographs along the way. The final video reveals a strange sense of motion as the camera moves effortlessly through the block revealing the the sinuous curves of wood grain that appears to ripple like water.   New in the Colossal Shop: The Urban Fold Paper City Urban Fold is an all inclusive kit that allows anyone to build the city of their dreams with a few simple folds. You punch out shapes, fold them into blocks, customize with stickers, build and play, put away, build and play again, etc. Everyone's an architect with this construction + craft activity that promises endless creative fun and open play.