Laura Ford’s 1991 sculpture Twiglet has been installed at Thirsk Hall Sculpture Garden, North Yorkshire, UK in the last decade of April 2024. (Photo by James Glossop/The Times)

Los Angeles native Mike Stilkey has always been attracted to painting and drawing not only on vintage paper, record covers and book pages, but on the books themselves. Using a mix of ink, colored pencil, paint and lacquer, Stilkey depicts a melancholic and at times a whimsical cast of characters inhabiting ambiguous spaces and narratives of fantasy and fairy tales. A lingering sense of loss and longing hints at emotional depth and draws the viewer into their introspective thrall with a mixture of capricious poetry, wit, and mystery. (Photo by Mike Stilkey)

“Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986), better known as L. Ron Hubbard (and often referred to by his initials, LRH), was an American pulp fiction author and religious leader who founded the Church of Scientology. After establishing a career as a writer, becoming best known for his science fiction and fantasy stories, he developed a self-help system called Dianetics which was first published in May 1950. He subsequently developed his ideas into a wide-ranging set of doctrines and rituals as part of a new religious movement that he called Scientology. His writings became the guiding texts for the Church of Scientology and a number of affiliated organizations that address such diverse topics as business administration, literacy and drug rehabilitation”. – Wikipedia

Photo: American science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology, uses his Hubbard Electrometer (patent pending) to determine whether tomatoes experience pain, 1959. His work led him to the conclusion that tomatoes “scream when sliced”. (Photo by Scott Lauder/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A performer dances at a housing exhibition in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, September 27, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)

A mosaic artwork, copied from an original painting, is pictured in a workshop in Kafranbel town in the Idlib governorate January 17, 2015. The mosaic workshop with 30 workers, manufactures artistic and revolutionary mosaics in Kafranbel. Each mosaic artwork takes 5 to 10 days to complete. The artists exhibit their artwork in local and international exhibitions, and have a scheduled exhibition this month about the “Syrian Revolution” in Turkey. (Photo by Khalil Ashawi/Reuters)

A model wears a creation as part of the Mugler Haute Couture Spring-Summer 2023 collection presented in Paris, Thursday, January 26, 2023. (Photo by Thibault Camus/AP Photo)

Shortlisted: “Two big eyes” by Miao Yong (Zejiang province, China). Damselflies look over the leaves. “I was photographing insects in a park near my home when suddenly I found two damselflies in the grass. They kept flying and it was very difficult to focus until suddenly they parked behind a leaf”. (Photo by Miao Yong/2017 Royal Society of Biology Photographer of the Year)

“Red Arrows” at the 2016 royal air tattoo, RAF Fairford, UK. By Jonny Williams, finalist: action. (Photo by Jonny Williams/UK National Geographic Traveller Photography Competition 2018)