U.S. Park Police work to keep people away from the area surrounding the Washington Monument after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck the east coast August 23, 2011 in Washington, DC. Police officers said that unidentified material had fallen off the Washington Monument as a result of the earthquake. All the monuments and buildings along the National Mall have been evacuated and closed. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Hirotoshi Itoh graduated from Tokyo National Fine Arts University in 1982 and later went into his family business as a stonemason. He spent several years working with metal before turning his attention to stones. He utilizes stones found in a river bank near his home, and he creates sculptures that juxtapose the original shape and hardness of the material with surprising humor and texture. You can find more of his work on his Deviant Art page.

American artist Robert Wechsler has realized a series of sculptural cubes made from thousands of pennies titled “The Mendicant“. Cubes achieved by notching and joining pennies in perfect orientation to one another. Joined at perpendicular angles, the coins create a lattice structure allowing tunnel like passages of light from certain angles. As one moves around them, the cubes seem to fluctuate from material to ethereal. The number of pennies increases exponentially with the size of the cube. Pictured here are three cubes differentiated with subtitles indicating the exact quantity used.

A lithographic sketch, purportedly by Beatles star John Lennon, shows his wife Yoko Ono in a sexual context within a document released by The National Archives March 23, 2004 in London. The document, which has been classified since 1970, contains sketches and letters which were seized by police to form part of the evidence for the indecency trial against the London Art Gallery which had been displaying the material. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

Claire and Rupert Callender of the Green Funeral Company pose for a photograph with a environmentally friendly coffin in woodland close to their office at Dartington Hall Estate on February 4, 2011 near Torquay, England. The Devon-based company operates as funeral directors and undertakers throughout the South West, offers an ecological alternative to traditional funerals, with coffins made from ecologically friendly materials such as wicker and bamboo, and can arrange funerals that encompass diverse religious and spiritual beliefs everything from a Catholic Requiem Mass, to a Pagan ritual at a stone circle on Bodmin Moor. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

“Amphilophus citrinellus is a large cichlid fish endemic to the San Juan River and adjacent watersheds in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. In the aquarium trade A. citrinellus is often sold under the trade name of Midas cichlid. A. citrinellus are omnivorous and their diet consists of plant material, molluscs and smaller fish”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Two Midas Cichlid (lat: amphilophus citrinellus) fish are seen in an aquarium at Hellabrunn zoo on December 23, 2009 in Munich, Germany. (Photo by Alexandra Beier/Getty Images)

Artist Robert Mickelson is an expert sculptor whose medium of choice happens to be glass. There's something so pure and serene about glass. Perhaps it's the material's transparency coupled with its fragility. Whatever it may be, Mickelson knows how to accentuate the element's most appealing qualities. Each of his life-like sculptural pieces exude realism with a refined quality.

A creature bathes at the Robolights art installation by Kenny Irwin Jr. in Palm Springs, California December 15, 2014. The installation consists of hundreds of whimsical robot and other themed sculptures created from recycled materials including golf carts, kitchen appliances and microwaved smart phones, and is open to the public each holiday season on the sprawling Irwin family property. (Photo by David McNew/Reuters)