3 . Inside the low lighting of Gather East Rock, the smell of coffee beans swirls (打旋) through the air. Art adorns (装点) the blue walls, but one painting stands out among the others. The painting’s name is “Mother Divine”, by the artist Sarahi Zacatelco. The mother in question is a green woman, with colorful plants adorning her head and water dripping (滴下) down her neck. In every brushstroke, Zacatelco pays homage to the man who taught her how to paint: her grandfather Agustin.

Born in 1982, Zacatelco learned how to create art from her grandfather in Oaxaca. At the time, her grandfather lived with her while her mother worked. Together, the two spent hours going out to the central plaza in Juchitán, where she let her senses take over. “You can see the food, you can smell it, you can see the lady selling flowers, and you can see everything,” she recalled excitedly. When she was six years old, her grandfather gave her a piece of paper and watercolors and showed her how to put the colors on it. She hasn’t stopped making art since.

Zacatelco’s grandparents made chess pieces out of rocks and wood to sell. They also made Talavera pottery (陶器) pieces, which Zacatelco described as “a Baroque tradition” that one might see in old colonial (殖民地的) homes. She no longer has any of her grandparent’s Talavera —“the tradition was lost due to being poorly paid and a lot of effort going into each piece.”

In the 1990s, Zacatelco’s mother decided to move her family to give them a better life. She moved her children to Mexico City, then to the Bronx, and then to the Brownsville neighborhood in Eastern Brooklyn. The family moved to Fair Haven, where Zacatelco still lives, in 2001. She called it the perfect place to raise two boys and two girls. Her family did not keep any of her grandfather’s old art before he died. But his artistic spirit did not die with him. Zacatelco carries on his legacy today with her art.

4 . Workers at the National Galleries of Scotland recently experienced quite a surprise after they X-rayed a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Hidden on the back of the painting Head of a Peasant Woman, which Van Gogh completed in 1885, was a self-portrait (自画像) of the Dutch painter. No one had ever found it.

The hidden self-portrait had been covered by glue and cardboard that had been attached to the back of the painting. “It was absolutely exciting,” Lesley Stevenson, the museum’s worker, said about the discovery. “We weren’t expecting much of the little painting when we performed the scans,” she said. But museum experts quickly changed their expectations when they looked at the X-rays. “We didn’t see much of the peasant woman, but we saw the lead white that Van Gogh used for his face showing up after the X-ray went through the cardboard,” she added.

Van Gogh painted Head of a Peasant Woman as part of a series of works focused on the working-class residents of Nuenen, a small farming community in the southern part of the Netherlands where he lived briefly in the 1880s. The woman in the painting is Gordina de Groot, a farm worker. She wears a white headpiece. In a letter that Van Gogh penned about the series in 1885 to Anton Kerssemakers, a friend, he described his excitement at his working-class subjects. “I’m working with great pleasure these days, for I would rather paint people than paint anything else,” he wrote.

Van Gogh also loved creating self-portraits, producing about 20 paintings of himself by the end of his life while he was living in Paris. Recreating his own image was a cheap way for him to practice portraiture as he didn’t have to spend money hiring models, according to a report.

Art historians at the National Galleries hope that the hidden self-portrait may help us understand the life of the artist. The museum is currently considering how to best remove the unwanted protective materials without harming the painting.

6 .

“By removing needless details in pursuit of perfection, Van Den followed in the footsteps of many great artists, writers, composers, and painters.”

Juhani Murros made an unexpected discovery during his visits to art galleries when he worked for an organization in Ho Chi Minh City in 1990. A small still life in an unnoticeable gallery commanded the Finnish physician’s attention. “It was not an eye-catching oil painting, yet its dark, mysterious colors and the emotional tension of its disciplined composition set it apart.” Thus began a long journey of discovering the art and life of Van Den, a Buddhist of mixed Chinese and Vietnamese ancestry who studied in Paris for less than two years during the first French Indochina War.

Murros’ biography is, by necessity, brief because there is limited knowledge of the artist, mostly in oral way by family and friends. Many of his paintings did not survive the damp Southeast Asian climate nor the political chaos of his lifetime. However, the author’s research appears to be extensive, as much a years-long spiritual examination of Van Den as a historical one. The artist’s love for country life is apparent in his work, and it is said by those who knew him that he preferred to paint countryside scenes close to his heart and worked as an outsider. He is uninterested in the more elegant work of academically recognized painters. Despite these limitations, Van Den won Vietnam’s most honorable art award in 1960.

Murros gives an in-depth look into the life of this little-known unsung master. The book introduces the readers to Van Den’s art with photographs of his paintings, accompanied by short stories behind them. The book is as quiet as the artist’s work, but it is a satisfying read. Each stroke of words in the book connects to the readers; the narrative awakens the artistic spirit in each one of us, encouraging us to follow our heart.

Sugar, protein and fat: if you’re good at scanning those nutrition facts on food and drinks packages, it’s thanks in large part to Burkey Belser, who is a well-known American graphic designer (平面设计师). But his work extended far beyond groceries. If you’ve noticed the Drug Facts box on over-the-counter medicines seems to be like the food label, that’s because Belser designed it, as well. He also created the yellow Energy Guide box for home appliances.

Belser’s passion for design started at a young age. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and began a journey to become a graphic designer. His exceptional talent and skill quickly gained recognition, earning him numerous awards and accolades.

Belser’s work is seen on billions of products. The nutrition fact box has been copied around the world. Creating the official food information box was a complicated process, with input from business groups and health advocates, along with Food and Drug Administration( FDA) experts. The design team worked through 35 versions before the product came out, and it was a huge success. “ That is a masterpiece of information architecture, and quite a victory for social responsibility, ” commented one Italian designer.

The nutrition label reflects Americans’ evolving (演变) relationship with food, shifting from an emphasis on vitamins and minerals to addressing obesity (肥胖) and related conditions. Belser’s work not only made an impact within the industry but also played a crucial role in effectively communicating important messages to the public.

Speaking of his success, Belser said that luck had probably played a big role. But he added, “ I’d say the willingness to work hard sets the stage to take advantage of whatever luck comes your way.”

8 . When Johannes Fritz, an Austrian biologist, was born 56 years ago, the northern bald ibis had disappeared completely from the wild and could only be found in zoos. But Mr. Fritz has spent his working life reintroducing the birds into the wild, and an extremely important part has been teaching the young the migration (迁徙) path.

When Mr. Friz decided to lead the migration in a plane, he was laughed at. But in 2004, three years after some experiments, Mr. Fritz flew an ultralight plane slowly enough for his winged students to catch up, and led the first group from Austria to Italy. He has since led 15 such migrations. Over that time, he has rewilded 277 young ibises, many of which then started to pass the path on to their own young.

But the path he taught the ibises before is no longer workable. With climate change warming the lakes where the birds summer, they now delay (推迟) their migration to November, one month later than they did just a decade ago. And they are now reaching the Alps too late to make it over the peaks (山峰) because the rising warm air flows were too weak by November to allow the birds to fly over the mountains.

Determined to save them, Mr. Fritz decided he would teach the birds a new, safer migration path. The new path is about three times as long as their former 800 miles one directly south to Tuscany, Italy. Flying at a highest speed of 25 miles per hour, the trip is expected to take about six weeks, instead of the two to reach Tuscany.

At Lake Constance this summer, humans and birds were practicing for their long journey. Soon, they’ll fly to Andalusia in Spain, dealing with unpredictable weather along the way. But the risks are “necessary,” Mr. Fritz said. “It’s not so much a job,” he added, “but my life’s purpose.”

10 . Mary Shelley bends over her latest creation. Although the carving is only half complete, the image of a waitress holding a plate of eggs comes out from the board. Of Shelley’s nearly seven hundred carvings, many show scenes with cows on farms and people in restaurants.

From memories to carvings

“My work is a visual diary, ” Shelley says. “The carvings describe things I have experienced and felt at different times in my life.”

Every one of her carvings tells a story. Many of the stories in Shelley’s woodcarvings come from memories of her childhood in a rural (乡村的) area outside of Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Shelley’s family managed a small farm. Mary was a serious girl who spent a lot of time raising animals, exploring outdoors, and reading. Although Shelley never felt especially artistic as a child, there was always an art project in the works in the Shelley household. Her grandmother painted. Her father was a commercial artist, who drew and wrote to make a living.

______

Shelley attended Cornell University and hoped to become a writer, but an unusual present took her in another direction. At age 23, she received a gift her father had made-a woodcarving of her as a girl on the farm. The gift caught her interest. After gathering boards from a building site where she worked as a carpenter, Shelley bought some tools and taught herself to carve.

Shelley soon realized that she loved the slow, thoughtful process of working with wood and painting. “A carving is like a jigsaw puzzle (拼图游戏),”   she explains. “I didn’t know how it would all fit together, but the process of solving the puzzle kept me going.”

The Shelley style

Early in her career, people hired Shelley to carve special pieces that took four or five weeks to complete. The money she received motivated her to try more complicated scenes created by carving deeper in the wood. Over time, Shelley’s art began to have its own style. In a typical Shelley woodcarving, some objects seem to reach out of the frame while others drop back, creating a feeling of depth.