For 18 years, Cuban-born Luli Sánchez designed prints for the fashion industry, before founding her own studio in 2004. Luli uses her unique touch with watercolor to create patterns inspired by everything from florals to kitchenware, geometry to animal skins. She lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and Merida, Mexico.

Happening now, through February 5th, 2012. On Medicine Lake in Plymouth, MN.

The fabulously quirky Art Shanty Projects, is a four-week-long exhibition that is part sculpture park, part artist residency and part social experiment. It is an artist driven temporary community exploring the ways in which the relatively unregulated public space of the frozen lake can be used as a new and challenging artistic environment to expand notions of what art can be.

Art Shanty Projects is an homage to the uniquely Minnesotan pastime of ice fishing in a well-equipped and creatively-executed shack. Dotting the state’s lakes in winter, anglers set up shelter, bore through the ice, set up their poles and propane heaters, then sit around playing cards, drinking beer and laughing the whole night long. Sounds like fun, right?

With names/themes such as “The Shanty of Wonder”, “Monsters Under the Bed Shanty”, “SitandSpinShanty”, “Fort Shanty” and “Robot Reprise”, the Art Shanties provide a unique opportunity for artists to interact with their audience, and vice versa, in an un-intimidating, non-gallery like environment. Artists can choose to work in a way that directly engages the audience, or in a more passive way.

Previously an annual exhibition, from the 2012 season it will run biennially, potentially changing to a new Twin Cities-area lake every two years.

Little bald Léon loves his grandfather. He loves the old man’s bushy black beard, which seems endowed with magic powers. But Léon’s grandmother wants to cut off the unkempt beard and regain the distinguished-looking man she married. When the old man’s asleep, grandmother prowls, scissors in hand, but Léon’s keeping a watchful eye on her. As long as grandpa lives, the beard will stay!

One day, grandpa doesn’t wake up. Léon is sad, especially as his grandmother is at last able to shave off the beard. To soften his pain, Léon decides to bury the beard. The rising sun next morning reveals that a beard forest has sprung up, thick and black like grandpa’s. Léon’s round head sports a sort of thick black brush. A souvenir of the old days, when he played and laughed with his grandfather.

Directed by Claude Barras and Cédric Louis, and co-produced by Hélium Films and the National Film Board of Canada

Benjamin Edmiston’s compositions are fueled by the creation a familiar but askew world. Using a flat and decorative style, his fantastical settings are inhabited by ominous characters. Planes of floating heads, half-skinned snakes, and bodiless arms are some of his visual vocabulary; recalling the tension of an early, crude Mickey Mouse cartoon – or a misplaced folk sculpture, standing eerily on a dusty shelf. Benjamin lives and works in Brooklyn.

Filmmaker Ben Proudfoot made a really lovely, short documentary about two neighboring shops – one of them a paper shop (McManus & Morgan Paper), the other a letterpress printer (Aardvark Letterpress) – both struggling to survive in downtown Los Angeles. It’s as heart wrenching as it is heart warming: a story of passionate shop owners who continue to do what they love, with very little financial gain or stability.

Peggy Wolf grew up in Germany and studied fashion design there, before graduating to work for an art gallery, a trend-consulting company, a freelance illustrator for magazines… and currently, in interior design. She found her true passion for illustration by way fashion; happier not to dress, but rather to draw, paint and collage artfully-clad women, using her strong eye for color, and a bold use of line and juxtaposed texture. On a whim, she moved to London, where she now lives.

Hands-down, my new favorite illustrator, Ricardo Cavolo was born in Salamanca (Spain) and now lives in Madrid. His style is a fantastic mélange of religious art, Russian criminal tattoos, South American flora, nautical themes, and naïve/outsider art. Quite the mix, with a great sense of humor. Be sure to also check out his online diary and Flickr.

Paris-based Julie Rousset does a little of everything, from identities, collateral, typefaces, publications and exhibits. Really digging her refined, clean-yet-playful aesthetic.

Phyllis Galembo’s interest in the masquerade traditions of Africa and its diaspora began twenty-five years ago, with her first visit to Nigeria. As a past Fulbright scholar, she has spent her career photographing the rituals and religious culture in Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti, as well as the homegrown custom of Halloween in the United States. Making portraits that document and describe the transformative power of the mask. Her subjects are participants in masquerade events, both traditional ceremonies and contemporary fancy dress and carnival, all of whom use costume, body paint and masks to create mythic characters – sometimes entertaining and humorous, often dark and frightening, and always powerful and thrilling.

She has written several books, and exhibited throughout the world, including in solo shows at the International Center of Photography, New York, and the Smithsonian, Washington DC. Galembo is represented by Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, and is Professor of Photography at the State University of New York. She lives in New York City.

Zeloot is a Dutch designer and illustrator. With a focus on gig posters, she has also done work for a wide range of clients such as New Yorker, Men’s Health, Heineken, Holland Herald, MTV/55DSL, IFFR, Sub Pop Records, Hasbro and Esquire.