“Meet the otter who likes to paint. Apparently he prefers watercolors… part of the new wave of avant-garde aquatic mammals.”

“Some people might say that humans beings are herd animals. But these stunning images appear to prove the adage beyond any doubt. These surreal mosaics, made from thousands of swarming human bodies, were the talk of this year’s Pulse LA art fair. The awe-inspiring pieces, created by New York based-photographic artist Angelo Musco, are, literally, making waves in the photographic world. Musco’s images mimic the complex structures of the natural world from an ant colony and beehive to a school of fish. His work attempts to touch on grand themes such as birth, procreation and gestation. ‘A swarm of fish captures a profusion of life, the safety of a symbolic nest, and a connection of one being to another.” w/ photos

“A real tiger rug is a rare thing to have, but rarer still is one made from hundreds of thousands of tobacco cigarettes. Weighing an impressive 440 pounds, this cigarette rug has to be one of the largest tobacco-inspired art installations in history. It was created by a group of artists by stacking hundreds of thousands of cigarettes on their ends, in the shape of a tiger pattern rug.” w/ photos

“Designer Pete Fecteau spent much of 2010 creating this amazing Rubik’s Cube mosaic of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., comprised of 4,242 individual Rubik’s Cubes. The mosaic measures 18’6″ by 9’8″ and weighs about 1,000 pounds. The concept of using Rubik’s Cubes this way came to Fecteau in a dream.” w/ photos + video

“It is usually a hobby which takes patience, care, and for the artist to be at their most comfortable so they can create true masterpieces. But while most painters insist that ‘you can’t rush art’, time is of the essence for these unusual artists, who paint unique pieces as underwater divers 64ft beneath the surface. The group of underwater divers from the Ukraine complete their series of drawings after plunging to the depths of the Black Sea. Although some watercolours take hours to finish, the scuba-trained artists are painting against the clock, as their diving equipment only allows them to draw for 40 minutes at a time. And time is not the only issue the artists have to deal with, as their watery surroundings change the color of their paints mid-piece.” w/ photos + video

“It’s strange how traditions start. In the late 1960s Ralph Upton, a farmer from the small, picturesque English village of Slindon in the county of West Sussex place his yearly crop of pumpkins, squashes and gourds on his shed to ripen. The colors and shapes of his harvest soon attracted visitors – and things have never been quite the same in Slindon since.” w/ photos

“Bogota-based Zaira Pulido has been asking every one of her friends and people she’s into for strands of their hair to use in a series of embroidered artworks. She uses the human hair instead of the usual thread and creates various works, like embroidered portraits of her friends (each made with their own hair), an embroidered comb or a replica of her bra. I noticed some people find working with human hair disgusting, but personally I like seeing hair used as an art medium, and Zaira Pulido’s work is right up my alley.” w/ photos

“A Singaporean artist has reproduced some of the world’s most famous paintings with just one spiral line. Chan Hwee Chong recreated Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s self-portrait and Johannes Vermeer’s the Girl with the Pearl Earring. His work is so precise that if he makes a single mistake he starts all over again. Mr Hwee Chong, 33, who lives in Hamburg, was commissioned to create the pieces by pen maker Faber and Castell to show off their artist pens. He said: “It wasn’t as easy as we thought. We went through many rounds of trial and error, painstaking drawing the masterpieces in one controlled line, by hand.” w/ photo

“With Halloween fast approaching, these amazing pumpkin carvings are enough to frighten off even the toughest of people. American Ray Villafane has taken his ‘pumpkin heads’ to a whole new level as these extraordinary pictures demonstrate. Taking just two hours to carve, slice and gouge, Ray uses everything from spoons to scalpels to create his pumpkin masterpieces. Based in the sunny state of Phoenix, Ray’s pumpkins have become something of an internet sensation, and have led to appearances on primetime American networks such as CBS and ESPN. Using his background in high art and his work in designing models for D.C and Marvel comics, Ray has sculpted intricate faces out of the common pumpkin that make your hair stand on end. His carvings take in a wide variety of gothic gargoyles in keeping with the devilish theme of the annual holiday.” w/ photos

“One of the projects on show at IDW is ‘sand carpets’ by the dutch studio muurbloem. A 2010 winner of the dutch design awards, the spatial design utilizes one of the first materials people used to create images – sand. To execute the patterns, a PVC tube is perforated and filled with the granular substance. To facilitate the work, the roller is fitted with a handle. These whimsical floor coverings do not last long however, a day at most in public spaces, but their ephemeral character lends a particular aesthetic quality. It is probably one of the simplest ways imaginable to formally decorate just about any place imaginable.” w/ photos