ANDREA LOVE’S STOP-MOTION animated video “Cooking With Wool: Breakfast,” opens with a miniature kitchen made entirely of felt. A human hand enters the frame to turn on a felted electric stove, and a coil of wool slowly changes from black to red as the burner heats up. Pats of felted butter appear to melt in a felted frying pan, into which teensy felted eggs are cracked. As they cook, coffee is prepared from a felted tea kettle, which pours felted hot water into a wee...

  Welcome spring with your own hand-painted botanical art—no talent needed! If coloring books are too simple, but drawing is just a bit too hard, then Sarah Simon’s Watercolor Workbook: 30-Minute Beginner Botanical Projects on Premium Watercolor Paper ($22.99,) is the perfect happy medium to help you get your art on. A true workshop in book form, it includes not only step-by-step lessons on basic watercolor techniques but also pre-sketched projects on real watercolor paper alongside color-mixing recipes and methods to use so you can achieve finished...

    1. Björk’s Cornucopia Björk’s most elaborate theatrical production to-date, Cornucopia—based on her album Utopia and featuring fungi-inspired stage designs, a 50-member Icelandic chorus, and immersive visual effects—earned raves when it debuted in 2019. Now, it’s back, with five California dates between Jan. 26 and Feb 8. Grab tix at axs.com (for L.A.) and ticketmaster.com (for San Francisco).  Courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Spyglass Media Group 2. Scream  The beloved meta-slasher Scream franchise is back for an eponymous fifth installment featuring original horror heroines Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox alongside...

Growing up in Montgomery, AL, mixed-media pop artist Ashley Longshore, 46, was taught that the “best way to be a woman” was to marry a rich man. But “that felt really awkward to me,” she says. “I wasn’t out blinking my eyes at my boyfriend to buy me a purse. I was tryin’ to figure out how I could never have to depend on anybody but myself to get those things.” Longshore’s fascination with what it means to be a self-sufficient woman eventually became the subject...

Six months ago, my friend Kate texted me a photo of her local community center’s class schedule featuring the days and times for “Adult Tap.” (She also sent a gif of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber tap dancing like a total goob in a bright orange tux.) I knew it was half dare/half invitation, and a few weeks later, we were shuffle-ball-changing our hearts out with a welcoming group of mostly older women on the stage of a suburban rec center. Did I have...

"Fairies Offering Flowers to Iris," 1920, modeled by Elsie Wright and taken by Frances Griffiths. Credit: The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, London Once upon a time, two girls played a prank that got way out of hand. A century ago, long before Photoshop, the pair fooled the world with photographs of what they claimed—and what eminent men believed—were fairies. "The fairies are on the plate—they are on the plate!” That, reported Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a young girl’s excited reaction as she watched...

River Phoenix’s most enduring performance may be his portrayal of Mike Waters, the narcoleptic sex worker, in My Own Private Idaho (1991). Written and directed by Gus Van Sant (Milk, Good Will Hunting) and starring Keanu Reeves as Scott, Phoenix’s character’s best friend and love interest, the film is a seminal piece of queer cinema with a cult following. Inspired by Shakespeare’s Henry V, My Own Private Idaho follows Mike and Scott as they travel from Portland, Oregon to Idaho, to Italy in search of...

If you've got an eye for the strange and unusual, put it to paper. Accessible and affordable, all you need to make beautiful paper collage art is a pair of scissors, a bottle of Mod Podge, and all those magazines you’ve been saving (even this one!). Artist Maria Rivans literally wrote the book on it (Extraordinary Things to Cut Out and Collage, Laurence King Publishing, Laurence King Publishing), and here she shares her top tips—from organization to composition to her favorite tools—for making the cut. Finders Keepers Comb...

When looking for an alternative to the grind of city life in L.A., artist Lorien Stern, known for turning subjects such as sharks and death into adorable and joyful creations, was pleasantly surprised by the tiny town of Inyokern in California’s Mojave Desert. “When we first started coming out here it was like, ‘OMG we’ve arrived on Mars!’ It’s an otherworldly experience,” says Stern. It was here, on her family’s plot of land—which Stern lovingly describes as a junkyard “full of good deals and forgotten...

Lanna Apisukh started her Everybody Skate photo project in 2018 to highlight the diversity of New York City’s skateboarding scene, in particular, to show off the growing numbers of female and queer skaters around the city. Now, in 2021, her skateboarder photography feels particularly relevant in a time in which the pandemic has created a resurgence of public space and forced personal re-negotiations of identity. Skateboarding parks offer the perfect intersection of the two: a public place for connecting with a community while performing one’s...