In this photo taken on January 20, 2024 a tourist poses in front of incense sticks drying in a courtyard in the village of Quang Phu Cau on the outskirts of Hanoi. Families living and working in the “incense village” of Quang Phu Cau now also make sticks in yellow, blue and green, catering to visitors eager to snap shots for Instagram. (Photo by Nhac Nguyen/AFP Photo)

People walk near an artwork depicting Pope Francis, following the death of the pontiff, in Rome, Italy, on April 22, 2025. (Photo by Dylan Martinez/Reuters)

Visitors stand next to the artwork “No, 2021” by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan displayed at the gallery Gagosian during the Art Basel fair for Modern and contemporary art, in Basel, on June 17, 2025. The fair will open to the public from June 19 to June 22, 2025, featuring over 290 leading galleries and more than 4,000 artists from five continents. (Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP Photo)

The RNLI Swanage lifeboat in Dorset, UK churns the water as it performs some manoeuvres on September 13, 2025. (Photo by Lewis Johnstone/BNPS)

Ukrainian territorial defence soldiers from the Donetsk Oblast fire D-20 artillery in the direction of Toretsk, Ukraine, 24 July 2025. (Photo by Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)

People admire “Dinosaur”, a pigeon sculpture along the High Line in New York, on Monday, October 21, 2024. The hand-painted sculpture by artist Iván Argote celebrates the pigeon's distant past as the birds descended from dinosaurs. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Gymnast Simone Biles performs a flip after throwing out the ceremonial first pitch prior to Game Two of the 2019 World Series between the Houston Astros and the Washington Nationals at Minute Maid Park on October 23, 2019 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Tim Warner/Getty Images)

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)