Buyan, a male Siberian brown bear, cools down under a stream of water sprayed by an employee in an enclosure on a hot summer day, at the Royev Ruchey zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia on June 14, 2019. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

Festival goers on the first day of the Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm in Somerset, Britain on June 26, 2019. Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts is a five-day festival of contemporary performing arts that takes place in Pilton, Somerset, west England, from 26 to 30 June 2019. (Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images)

In this undated photo provided on Monday, November 25, 2019, by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, center, poses as he inspects a women's company under Unit 5492 of the Korean People's Army in North Korea. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. (Photo by Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP Photo)

Costumed revelers walk through a street prior to the carnival parade in the village of Vevcani, in the southwestern part of North Macedonia, on Wednesday, January 13, 2021. The coronavirus pandemic has disrupted the usual carnival celebrations which have been taken place for centuries in the tiny North Macedonian town of Vevcani. A few hundred locals gathered at the small town square to celebrate the carnival, but police dispersed the gathering after a brief scuffle with a small group. No arrests or injuries were reported. (Photo by Boris Grdanoski/AP Photo)

A view of St Thomas Becket church during the morning frost, in Fairfield, Kent, England, Thursday, January 6, 2022, following freezing overnight temperatures. (Photo by Gareth Fuller/PA Wire via AP Photo)

A looter smiles as she runs away from a member of the South African Police Services (SAPS) inside the Lotsoho Mall in Katlehong township, East of Johannesburg, on July 12, 2021. Several shops are damaged and cars burnt in Johannesburg, following a night of violence. Police are on the scene trying to control further protests. It is unclear if this is linked to sporadic protests following the incarceration of former president Jacob Zuma. (Photo by Phill Magakoe/AFP Photo)

Harvesting water lilies in Dhaka, Bangladesh in the last decade of August 2023. (Photo by Mostafijur Rahman Nasim/Solent News & Photo Agency)

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)