Lala Abaddon combines traditional practices of weaving, photography, and painting into her brilliantly colored woven prints. When we first featured her work, Abaddon took us behind the scenes into her New York studio, where she works quietly alongside her parakeet Poquito, and showed us how she uses a stationary rail cutter to make the compositions of her largescale weaves out of her own photographs, images inspired by complex backstories. Some pieces can take one month or longer to complete. It’s a process that Abaddon documents in her live stream series, “Transfiguration”, a project that examines the connection that technology has provided to us, while at the same time, creating what she calls a “great aloneness” and disconnect with physical nature. This concept carries forward to her recent series, titled “Martyr Syndrome”, where Abaddon creates glitch-like reworkings of her photographs depicting young women in private moments, some with tearful or wide eyed expressions. The patterns in these works are elaborate and intentional, enhancing the emotional qualities of the original image while also acting as a metaphor for the patterns of life and the universe. In her statement, Abaddon says that her art is propelled by a need to relinquish control of reality through the meditative and ritualistic practice of creating it. She believes that life is for the now, and has decided to use her work to create beauty out of horror and to find strength from the pain and complexities of life.
Lala Abaddon, with her first piece of 2016.
The aspects of William Mortensen’s photography that were controversial during his lifetime—clever manipulation of imagery and dark themes—are now considered to be marks of his greatness. In the show "Witches" at Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick, Stephen Romano Gallery offers both unseen work and iconic meditations on the occult from his output in the 1920s and ’30s. The exhibition runs August 3 through November 3 at the venue in Cleveland, Ohio.
After singing for a rock band, working as a tattooist, and modeling for Playboy, Russian artist 
If you played with your food when you were a kid, then you might enjoy this set of wacky photographs by 