This month, the team at The Public Domain Review launched a new project aimed at artists, illustrators, designers, and creatives of all stripes. Containing 10,000+ items, the Public Domain Image Archive is a vast trove of illustrations, prints, scans, and more, all downloadable and free for use.

The database offers a functional search that allows users to sort by artist, time period, style, and theme. For those seeking maximum visual stimulus, there’s also an “Infinite View” option that collates images of all types into a navigatable grid.

Included in the collections are 19th-century drawings that turn maps into farcical figures, vivid fish renderings by Louis Renard, and satirical black-and-white cartoons from the censorship-laden Prohibition era.

Curators plan to add more entries to the database each week, so be sure to check back for updates. And, if you’d like more deep dives into copyright-free works, check out the public domain archive on Colossal.

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In a lush, wooded pocket in Rouen, France, a meditation space rests on the forest floor. Designed by Linfeng Zhou of Vancouver-based LFZ Studio, “Le Monde dans un Gland,” or “The World in an Acorn,” invites visitors into its shell to have a seat and reflect.

Diamond-shaped, interlocking panels of marine plywood nest together to create the scaled cupule of the nut, which allows light to pierce through and cast dappled sun spots around the interior. The entrance mimics a crack in the shell before the root appears, which asks visitors “to step inside and embrace the perspective of an awakening tree.”

Set atop concrete blocks and lined with weather-resistant materials, the immersive acorn is designed to withstand the wet, rainy climate without disrupting the forest ecosystem. Utilizing minimal nails and screws emphasizes a more natural building approach that relies on perfectly cut interlocking components rather than additional hardware.

Find more from LFZ Studio on its website. (via designboom)

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The Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest received nearly 60,000 entries from 117 countries for its 2024 competition, an immense pool from which judges choose just 100 finalists. To bring the public into the selection process, the Natural History Museum, which develops and produces the annual event, has launched the People’s Choice Award.

Twenty-five stunning images are eligible for votes and capture a wide range of biological happenings around the globe. In Botswana, David Northall came upon an overly tenacious honey badger determined to snack on a porcupine despite the spiny creature’s pointed attack. And in Bhigwan, India, Arvind Ramamurthy stumbled upon five wolves—a species with dwindling numbers given human encroachment—playing in a lush meadow.

The contest is open through January 29, so check out all 25 photos and cast your vote on the museum’s website.

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French artist Youri Cansell, a.k.a. Mantra (previously) continues to brighten neighborhood streets and large cities alike with his vivid insect murals. Drawing on a fascination with nature and its preservation, he creates monumental specimen cases on buildings around the world, filled with a wide variety of butterflies.

The artist recently completed his largest mural to date in Miami, positioned on the rooftop of the Southeast Financial Center building. Nestled into the surface of a characteristically organized case, a range of colorful butterflies rest alongside the structure’s utility systems.

The mural features numerous species, including the endangered Miami blue butterfly that’s native to South Florida. “It’s always a pleasure to paint in Miami, a city that thrives on its vibrant mix of people and cultures—much like the butterflies in my mural, which represent a diverse selection of specimens,” the artist says.

Additional recent projects include a giant glass-fronted display on the side of a building in Brooklyn and a towering, narrow composition in downtown Houston. Find more on Mantra’s website and Instagram.

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While traditional plein air painters capture their surroundings while outdoors, artist Maria Calandra takes a different approach. By roaming the coastal headlands of Maine, exploring the waters of Florida, and venturing out to the rolling fields of Southern France, Calandra finds inspiration in nature for her dynamic acrylic landscapes.

The artist’s Brooklyn studio is laden with energy after she returns from such invigorating excursions. “I paint while reflecting on that moment during a hike when you start to feel Earth’s vibrations pulse through your feet and up your spine, letting memory, intuition, and those leftover vibrations take the reins,” she describes.

Calandra’s painting style mimics this intensity as she translates a stream of consciousness through fluid brushstrokes and oscillating organic forms. Instinct guides the artist, who describes the act as “automatic painting.”

This January, the artist will be in a group show at Half Gallery in New York followed by a solo show in June at the gallery’s Los Angeles location. Find more on Calandra’s website and follow along on Instagram.

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The Paper Ark, a collaboration between Nayan Shrimali and Venus Bird (previously), celebrates the diverse beauty of our planet’s wildlife. In The Parrot Project, a new series of intricate paper-cut pieces, the striking creatures take center stage in vivid color.

“This series focuses on the vibrant beauty of parrots and their contribution to the ecosystem,” say the Ahmedabad, India-based artists, who created 40 different species during the course of one year. Each piece is meticulously hand-cut and painted, realistically depicting the feathered beings.

The Paper Ark’s collection captures the vibrancy of myriad tropical avian varieties, from the bright blue, yellow, and red of the macaw to the dramatic flash of color in the red-tailed black cockatoo.

“We want our audience to not just appreciate the beauty of this wonderful species but also understand its importance in nature,” the pair says. Ten percent of proceeds from sales of this series will be donated to a parrot conservation organization.

See more on The Paper Ark’s website and Behance, and follow updates on Instagram.

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A red squirrel diving headlong into a tree snags the top award in the 2024 Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards (previously), snapped by Italian photographer Milko Marchetti. “He has been sitting on this beauty of a shot for a couple of years now and decided that this year was the year to enter it,” the organizers say. “We are chuffed he did because this little red squirrel has only gone and won the whole competition!”

Additional category winners and highly commended images include a beady-eyed “mafia boss” by Takashi Kubo, a discombobulated eagle by Tapani Linnanmäki, and a celebratory mantis by Jose Miguel Gallego Molina. Check out more finalists, including a few that won in their categories, and see the entire gallery on the contest’s website.

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What if succulents sprouted in squiggles? Or cacti turned orange and floated to the sky like balloons?

An imaginative animation by Hiroshi Takagishi pushes botanical specimens and their potential evolution to peculiar extremes. Inspired by contradictions and irregularities in nature, “Odd” is a digitally crafted film that envisions the ways various specimens could morph from one state to another. As cacti wiggle and wobble or burst into dainty green petals, their recognizable forms become strange and surreal.

Find more from Takagishi on Vimeo.

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Home to more than 40,000 plant species, 1,300 kinds of birds, and millions of insects, the Amazon is a vital and increasingly threatened part of our global ecosystem. By highlighting the incredible diversity and beauty of nature and wildlife around the planet, Vital Impacts (previously) raises funds for the preservation of the rainforest through its annual print sale.

This year, in addition to the fundraiser featuring work by more than 80 photographers, the program has launched the “Saving the Monarchs” campaign, showcasing the work of award-winning National Geographic photographer Jaime Rojo. “With the Monarch butterfly population declining by 90 percent in recent decades, efforts are underway to protect their habitats and ensure their survival,” says a statement from Vital Impacts.

Rojo has spent two decades photographing the magnificent insects, tracing their annual migration across the length and breadth of North America. Wintering in Mexico—or California for those west of the Rocky Mountains—the iconic butterflies return north in the summertime, where they typically lay a single egg on a milkweed plant.

Depending on the temperature, the egg cycle lasts for three to five days, after which a small larva emerges. As it grows, it sheds its skin a number of times, developing recognizable black, white, and yellow stripes. Then, once full grown, the larva spins a silk mat, stabs a stem into the mat to hang from, and encapsulates itself inside a pupa. After around eight to fifteen days, the adult Monarch emerges with bright orange and black wings.

During the summer, Monarchs live between two and five weeks, but if they hatch later in the year, they complete an incredible journey south, where they overwinter in clusters on trees in warmer climates. These adults will then live just long enough to hatch new eggs so future generations can return to the northernmost breeding grounds.

Monarch populations have declined in recent decades due to myriad factors, from the destruction of milkweed—the only plant on which they lay eggs—and overwintering habitats to temperature changes and drought due to the ongoing climate crisis. Initiatives like Monarch Watch, which this fundraiser benefits, emphasize conservation, track colonies’ movements, and promote education.

Many prints in this year’s sale start at $100, with options for different sizes and striking limited editions. Sixty percent of profits are earmarked to support Monarch conservation through Monarch Watch and FOCEN.

The remaining 40 percent of proceeds further the efforts of “the storytellers who are committed to shining a light on these critical issues and driving positive change in our world” via donations to COICA, an international program dedicated to the support of 511 Indigenous Peoples in the Amazon Basin.

See more of Rojo’s work on his website, and purchase prints in this year’s sale, which continues through January 31.

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“We might call that a cold case, right? There’s no evidence, there’s no murder weapon… It’s a crime scene, but the culprit—the criminal—has left.” Biologist Karen Lips’s opening words in the 2023 animated short film, “The Waiting,” portend a mystery with far-reaching implications.

Directed by Volker Schlecht and written by Alexander Lahl and Max Mönch, the award-winning film traces the mysterious disappearance of tree frogs in Costa Rica. Through a hand-drawn, mostly black-and-white style, rainforest creatures transform from plants, and tiny tadpoles metamorphose into full-grown amphibians.

In the 1990s, Lips undertook research in the Costa Rican rainforest, stationed in a small shack its resident scientists called “la casita,” where she monitored a group of fluorescent green tree frogs, Isthmohyla calypsa. The species possessed unique spikes on their hands that were used as weapons to physically fight for dominance within the habitat.

For nearly two years, she studied the Isthmohyla calypsa’s growth patterns, behavior, and habitat, before returning to the University of Miami to write up her research. When one final experiment prompted her to return to the forest, she arrived only to find that the frogs had vanished. “All of them,” she says.

At first, Lips wondered if the disappearance was the result of something she had done. Had they gotten scared? Had she bothered them too much? Perhaps there hadn’t been enough rain? “I thought… maybe I just need to wait long enough, and they’ll come back,” she says.

After waiting an entire summer, the frogs never reappeared. She was determined to solve the mystery, but no evidence remained to study. “There was no smoking gun,” Lips says. Eventually, she moved to another site to study a new set of frogs. But after a few days, her team began noticing unusual skin problems.

The malefactor turned out to be microscopic fungi known as chytrids, and it wasn’t limited to the mountainous cloud forests of Costa Rica. Researchers in countries across the globe reported similar findings when Lips shared her concerns.

Although it’s impossible to tell how the frogs initially came into contact with the fungus, humans bear the responsibility for their fate, and ultimately, that of many other creatures. The more we import and export food and other organic goods, the more likely invasive—and sometimes dangerous—organisms will spread. “We have made it super easy for infectious diseases of all sorts to leave the jungle and get to a major city in a couple of hours,” she says.

For frogs alone, the effects are considerable: “The estimate is somewhere between 150 and maybe 200 species have gone extinct in the past two or three decades,” Lips says. “Forty-one percent of all amphibians are in decline. And that’s worse than any other group of animals on the planet.”

Find out more about the film on Instagram.

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