Often working on a towering scale, the inflatable sculptures of Max Streicher are studies in form, space, and movement, as each’s air-filled interior gives the material life. Using recycled vinyl and nylon spinnaker (along with electric fans), Streicher crafts figurative giants that loom in both cityscapes and open interiors. He’s been working in this form since 1989.
“Generally inflatables are an expression of naive optimism,” Streicher says. “In an art context they signal popular culture, anti-art and irony. I play with and against these expectations. The movement of air within my forms recalls our own sensation of breath—of breathlessness, of holding our breath, etc. My work exists in moments of kinesthesia, when the movement of air within a form causes something to stir within the physical being of the viewer. This response is to more than just the obvious action of inflation and the robust occupation of space. What I feel is even more moving is the recognition of deflation, shrinking, vulnerability, silence and dying.”
See more of his work below.
Every year in Niigata, Japan, artists take the leftover straw from their annual rice harvest and turn it into works of art. Called Wara art, or Rice-straw art, aspiring young artist Amy Goda has been creating such works since 2013. Her latest series featuring giant animals was completed last week and has already gone viral. Measuring 16 feet tall, they are her largest to date, fashioned after a roaring T-rex and tricerotops, and other animals like a coiled cobra, a crab clapping its claws, and even a rubber ducky.
In what the artist himself calls "homespun faerie tales", 
A 50-foot-tall Minotaur and a giant spider recently descended upon Toulouse, France, as part of the