When Nigel Peterson and Deborah Walsh subtitled their Grass/Jelly blog “a boy a girl agar”, we knew it had to be good. And it was better. This is the pair behind the 120 litres of jelly on the grass display on the lawn of the Suter Gallery in New Zealand. It’s not a complicated idea: whip up some beautiful jelly molds (burying dolls in some!) and display the gloriously jiggly final product in all its splendour. But the splendour in the grass doesn’t last forever. Eventually jelly that tries to survive the elements gets plain ugly. Grass/Jelly also depicts the ‘b;oat and shrivel of life’, according to the creators who have also put together a flckr show of over 500 snapshots showing the ravages of time and nature. Our personal favorite jelly is the one that contains the doll with blue hair, surrounded by all those embedded curlers.

Artists: Nigel Peterson + Deborah Walsh
+ grassjelly.wordpress.com

Anthony Ausgang remembers what it was like to watch Saturday morning cartoons when the television was still new and at the time he would have had no idea that these cartoons would play a major role in his career. Ausgang is a brilliant cartoonist who is known for his animals and hot rods, but it is his reworking of found canvases that really made us pay attention.

Artist: Anthony Ausgang
+ ausgangart.com

Love and the human condition come out in Tim McCormick’s paintings, in a soft focus street sort of way. Definitely no traces of saccharine, and the sugar that’s there is there for a reason. McCormick’s brand of figurative expressionism leaves a lot to the viewer while proving umpteen clues towards the unraveling of the riddles that are his paintings. It’s almost hard to believe he also paints surfboards and skateboards.

Artist: Tim McCormick
+ timmccormickart.com

If you had to choose just one word to describe Jason Maloney’s art, it would have to be subversive. His paintings show what happens when Barbie’s private life is disturbed, or the dangers of too much candy. No one lives happily ever after and childhood is no fairy tale. But somehow Maloney’s truths are made easier to digest by his use of bright framing colour and candy hearts, broken or not. Still, poor Dipsy.

Artist: Jason Maloney
+ jasonmaloneyart.com

Nathan Spoor paints hauntingly beautiful landscapes that feel like a repressed memory or a distant dream. Spoor’s hues and shading, the lights and darks, are such that one feels that something is lurking under the surface, behind a tree or beneath the waves of licorice string. His surrealist style makes it impossible to avoid mention of the delicious hints of Magritte and Dalì. Cool blues, purples and greens set the scene for mysterious adventures that we can only guess at.

Artist: Nathan Spoor
+ nathanspoor.com

Los Angeles-based Lola (who goes by one name) is the conduit to a world of characters with large heads and unusual eyes. These creatures hail from a healthy imagination, have interesting names and engage in less than ordinary activities – all par for the course given that Lola is heavily under the influence of children’s literature and the stories of her own childhood. Before devoting herself to her painting, Lola worked as a tattoo artist, hitting the acrylics during the slow times. This wonderfully creative artist also takes inspiration from the flea market frames she uses to set the tone for her work – the gaudier the better!

Artist: Lola
+ lolastrangeart.com

1,000 Greetings: Creative Correspondence Designed for All Occasions by Peter King and Company is a nifty little compendium of cards produced by a variety of designers. The purpose is twofold: to serve as a greeting as well as to highlight the designer’s talents. What the reader benefits from is the inspiration and creativity unleashed by these projects that use Twinings’ teabags, strips of photomat pictures and the humble brown paperbag. Bear in mind that this is truly a picture book (and a swell one at that), so no juicy details.

Paperback, 320 pages. Rockport 2004. $25.20 at Amazon.

+ 1000 Greetings at Amazon

Ramblin' Worker Steve MacDonald specializes in embroidering his canvases, leading us to a world of deer and tigers.

And DNA 11, the folks who brought us DNA portraits, also offer fingerprint portraits – choose your own colour combos.

Maureen Gallace’s small simple oils are often of the same subjects, the barns and beach shacks, the shorelines and pathways, the porches and long quiet days of New England. At first glance these works seem like oversimplified works akin to something one step up from modern take on a traditional paint-by-number, but there is a light and stillness to the works that can be interpreted as either extreme peacefulness or a more dangerous calm before the storm. Her structures have few windows, if any. Her landscapes are unpeopled. Let the imagination loose and the lightness of the paintings can become just a little bit heavier.

Artist: Maureen Gallace
+ maureenpaley.com

Ceramic artist Ken Gangbar had some new pieces at the recent Interior Design Show in Toronto. His objects in clay are delicate works of porcelain that rely on elegance and simplicity of form rather than a surfeit of detail to carry through their impact. The small porcelain pods that jut out from the wall in an installation of seemingly random placement is fantastic, one of those pieces that draws the viewer in closer and closer, but is just as attractive from a distance. Likewise the flatter, seed-like pieces arranged in a wave are just as enticing. What makes these installations so effective is the sheer quantity of unexpected objects in an unexpected place.

Artist: Ken Gangbar
+ kengangbar.com

Danish artist Michael Kvium produces eerily fascinating work that often shows the human condition in a new light. Kvium’s figurative paintings are haunting depictions of bodies not exactly as they should be. Or perhaps it is our expectations that are confused. It is difficult to understand gender or age in his paintings or even to readily analyze the expressions. Kvium does not limit his oeuvre to these bizarre characters, as he is also drawn towards interpretations of nature as well as abstraction.

Artist: Michael Kvium
+ faurschou.com