Miles Van Rensselaer using everything from glass and crystal to bronze and iron, from gold and silver to tooth and bone, from steel, copper and lead to wood, clay, feather and hair. He has been fortunate enough to work – and humbled by working – with and among talented artists from all over the world. His work is his homage to these people and their vanishing ways of life, his translation of their technique, imagery, idea of “primitive” art into modern Western materials.

Rick Kelly, owner of Carmine Street Guitars, poses for a picture at his shop in New York City, U.S., July 21, 2016. Kelly builds custom guitars from the “bones of New York”, using reclaimed lumber from historic New York buildings. (Photo by Joe Penney/Reuters)

A well-dressed bulldog has amassed thousands of fans online, after her owner took to dressing her up in wildly elaborate outfits and posting the pictures to the photo-sharing site Instagram. Tania Ahsan, 31, of New York, has posted online over 500 pictures of her patient pooch, Maya, and nearly 70,000 people have followed her exploits. Maya has been pictured as Queen Victoria, King Kong, Elvis Presley and Sherlock Bones, and far from wriggling out of the getups as soon as possible, Ahsan says Maya loves it. Here: Maya as a monkey and a banana. (Photo by Tania Ahsan/Caters News)

Fossilized whale bones are on display outside the Wati El Hitan Fossils and Climate Change Museum, a UNESCO natural World Heritage site, on the opening day, in the Fayoum oasis, Egypt, Thursday, January 14, 2016. Egypt has cut the ribbon on the Middle East's first fossil museum housing the world's largest intact skeleton of a "walking whale" in an attempt to attract much-needed tourists driven off by recent militant attacks. The construction of the much-hyped Fossils and Climate Change Museum was covered a 2 billion euros (2. 17 billion dollars) grant from Italy, according to Italian Ambassador Maurizio Massari. Its centerpiece is an intact, 37-million-year-old and 20-meter-long skeleton of a legged form of whale that testifies to how modern-day whales evolved from land mammals. The sand-colored, dome-shaped museum is barely discernible in the breathtaking desert landscape that stretches all around. (Photo by Thomas Hartwell/AP Photo)

A relic hunter dubbed “Indiana Bones” has lifted the lid on a macabre collection of 400-year-old jewel-encrusted skeletons unearthed in churches across Europe. Art historian Paul Koudounaris has hunted down and photographed dozens of gruesome skeletons in some of the world's most secretive religious establishments. Photo: Albertus in the church of St George in Burgrain, Germany. Incredibly, some of the skeletons, which took up to five years to decorate, were even found hidden away in lock-ups and containers. (Photo by Paul Koudounaris/BNPS)

Kung Fu master Li Liangui practices “Suogugong” Kung Fu and his wife Liang Xiaoyan (R) practices Qigong at a park in Beijing, China, June 30, 2016. For 50 years, kung fu master Li Liangui has been contorting his body into eye-watering positions while practising one of the more unusual and less popular Chinese martial art forms. The 70-year-old is an expert in suogugong, or body shrinking kung fu, where practitioners dislocate their bones to help them achieve unlikely positions and feats. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A racehorse is hoisted up before its operation at Veliefendi equine hospital in Istanbul March 3, 2015. A state-of-the-art hospital for hundreds of horses run by the Jockey Club of Turkey at Istanbul's Veliefendi racecourse is the country's oldest and biggest. Grooms and trainers at the equine clinic work with vets and nurses while owners hope their prize runners, often worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, will recover quickly and then run faster still. (Photo by Murad Sezer/Reuters)

Organizers of an exhibition of ancient instruments of torture in Huai'an, Jiangsu province, have suggested that children, heart disease patients and people with high blood pressure stay away because of the vivid depictions of shocking cruelty. The exhibition has more than 200 instruments of torture on display in the 50,000-square-meter exhibition halls of a restored ancient building. Wax figures, along with sound and light techniques, are incorporated for scary effect. The local government said the exhibition is for tourists and historians to research ancient torture practices. (Photo by ChinaFotoPress)