A woman poses for a souvenir photo with a cat statue on display at the Shenzhen Bay commercial district, in Shenzhen, China's Guangdong province, Monday, September 15, 2025. (Photo by Andy Wong/AP Photo)

Visitors pass an exhibit for Sculpture by the Sea, along the coastal walk from Bondi to Tamarama in Sydney, Australia on October 24, 2025. The annual event is Australia’s largest annual outdoor sculpture exhibition. (Photo by Xinhua News Agency/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A view shows a church in front of a high-rise apartment building in Saint Petersburg, Russia on October 30, 2019. (Photo by Anton Vaganov/Reuters)

An exhibition staff member looks over artworks by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz on display during a preview of the exhibition “Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope” at the Tate Modern in London, Britain, 15 November 2022. The large-scale Abakan sculptures have been brought together for the first time in the UK. The exhibit opens on 17 November 2022 and runs until 21 May 2023. (Photo by Andy Rain/EPA/EFE/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A gallery worker poses with work by artist Elinor Stanley during a press preview of The RA Schools Show 2023 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Britain, 08 June 2023. The RA Schools Show 2023 runs from 08 to 25 June 2023 at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. (Photo by Neil Hall/EPA)

An artwork by artist Chavis Marmol, a Tesla 3 car crushed by a nine-ton Olmec-inspired head, is pictured in Mexico City on March 13, 2024. (Photo by Carl de Souza/AFP Photo)

Philip Colbert poses in front of his artwork at The Gallery Hosu on March 31, 2025 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images for Philip Colbert Studio)

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)