Known for the origami-inspired technique she uses to transform paintings into wall sculptures, Los Angeles-based artist Susan Maddux’s creativity is incredible to experience. Each artwork, ranging in size from 12-inches all the way up to seven feet tall and protruding 2-6 inches from the wall, is constructed from separate acrylic on canvas paintings that are individually folded before being added to the larger piece. As Maddux explains it, the canvas is painted, folded, and unfolded many times as she experiments with proportion and patterning. The final forms, repeating mirrored images, bring to mind garments, perhaps a kimono or a cape, and acquire an anthropomorphic quality that transforms spaces.

Maddux is a 4th generation Hapa-Japanese woman, born and raised in Hawaii with a few stints living on the mainland growing up. Her work reflects her personal experiences, recalling the land’s lush landscape and brilliant colors with each piece of canvas. The work also connects Maddux to generations of women who came before her through the rituals of smoothing, folding, shaking out cloth, repetition, accumulation, veneration, and reflection.

After receiving a fine art degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, Maddux’s career began as a surface designer in New York. The profession, and what she learned through it gave her a different perspective on painting. But every time she would consider taking it on full-time, someone would say it was impossible to support herself that way and it couldn’t, or shouldn’t, be done. So, she protected her artistic talents and kept them for herself.

In 2012, Maddux made the move to Los Angeles and began exploring how to plug away at her paintings as material, developing the folding collage technique in the process. In 2019, after some life struggles, she went professional as an artist.

“Painting had always been how I came back to myself, what helped me remember who I was, and how I got grounded,” Maddux says. “I had the opportunity to do a large installation at the LA Design Festival in 2019, and I took that chance and gave it my all. I did 12 pieces, and things started really taking off. My work was discovered by the design community, and I’ve been able to work within both art and design since then, which has been fantastic.”

Maddux took a minute to recall traveling to visit her grandparents for the first time in San Antonio, Texas, when she was 10 years old. Never having gone anywhere before, their 15-foot carved antique wooden front door from Italy made an impression, as did the rest of the house. “It was built in a Mediterranean style with open walkways and bougainvillea surrounding a tiled pool that sparkled in the sunshine,” she recalls. “The house was filled with art they had collected all over the world. It was a total revelation for me to see that you could intentionally create an environment of beauty and harmony like that.”

If you’d like to catch Maddux’s work in person, her next solo show, Wet Drapery, opens April 13th at the Not There Gallery in Chinatown, Los Angeles. But today she’s joining us for Friday Five!

1. Yokai

My fascination with the spirit world and depictions of yokai, Japanese ghosts and demons, began when I was very young. Growing up in Hawaii, I was always aware of the supernatural world, and hearing ghost stories from my Japanese relatives fueled my imagination. Paintings of yokai and the grotesque seem to open up space for the imagination to run wild and delightful depictions of demons that run from terrifying to absurd are absolutely captivating.

2. My Art Collection

I started my art collection by trading art with friends when I was in school at the San Francisco Art Institute. I’ve known so many incredible artists over the years, and sometimes I’ve been lucky enough to collect their work. I like to buy something every year as a gift to myself. I have a couple of large paintings and photographs, and many smaller pieces. I love to be surrounded by pieces that remind me of inspiring and talented friends and how art shapes the world we inhabit and makes life so much more interesting.

3. Vases

When I travel, I love to buy ceramics. Something made by hand, with materials from a particular area is such a great way to connect with and remember the creative energy of a place. Some of my favorite vases are made by friends as well, we’re lucky to have such a rich ceramic tradition here in Los Angeles. When I was little, a family friend gave me a collection of tiny vases because I loved small things. Putting a single flower in a little vase brings me right back to that fascination. I’m always foraging on my walks in the hills, so I’ve collected quite a few large heavy ceramic vases that can hold the eucalyptus branches, overgrown mustard stalks, seed pods, and palm fronds I find while I’m out.

4. Symmetry

I became very aware of the relationship between elements when I started exploring print and pattern design. Symmetry is a very important organizing principle that creates an expectation that is really interesting to play with. In my work, I refer to symmetry as it is found in nature – an imperfect mirror image. That little bit of difference creates tension and curiosity and offers an invitation to look closer. We intuitively sense something humanizing about imperfect symmetry. It wasn’t made by a machine, but rather speaks of the beauty of a flower or a face we love in its unique construction.

5. Vintage Textiles

I grew up thrifting in Hawaii. We would find a lot of 60s and 70s pieces and I had an incredible collection of psychedelic shifts and house dresses – the kind with the zipper up the front that grandma used to wear – that I wore to high school. This did not make me very popular, but I did become interested in textiles and patterning. I always shop by both feel and look, and I loved going through the racks looking for treasure: vintage aloha wear patterns, prints on silk, or barkcloth. I’ve always collected vintage, and over time I’ve used many pieces from my collection in my own work, as inspiration for patterns in paintings and even as subject matter.

 

 

Work by Susan Maddux:

The most recent development in my work has been incorporating painted portals or frames that are specific to each piece and painted directly on the wall.

Snapshots of the Boston bar Playland taken by bartender Jim McGrath and friends beginning in 1958 and ’59 show a drag queen leaning on a jukebox under clouds of balloons, and men dressed up as monsters for what looks like a Halloween party, and men in grinning groups embracing as they pose in front of Christmas decorations. In scholar and activist Patricia A. Gozemba’s black and white snapshots from a 1983 reunion of “working-class lesbians” at Fran’s Place in Lynn, women in suits and sweatshirts and permed hair smile and dance as couples or lean in together around tables full of drinks with cigarettes pinched between their fingers.

These amazing personal snapshots come from The History Project, an archive begun in 1980 to preserve New England LGBTQ+ histories, and are featured in the exhibition “As the World Burns: Queer Photography and Nightlife in Boston,” at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) at Tufts gallery, 230 the Fenway, Boston, from Jan. 24 to April 21, 2024. The one-room exhibit offers a striking window into parts of our community’s history often overlooked by conventional tellers.

“As the World Burns” showcases photography of queer life and liberation in Boston primarily from the 1970s to ‘90s—as well as publications, video, ceramics, and textiles—by Craig Bailey, Bobby Busnach, Nick DeWolf, Sherry Edwards, Avram Finkelstein, Allen Frame, Jason Byron Gavann, Nan Goldin, Patricia A. Gozemba, Jim McGrath, Philip Phlash, Angela Russo, Gail Thacker, Shellburne Thurber, Geraldine Visco, Christian Walker, and Mark Winer.

This was the period of Boston’s Combahee River Collective and their influential 1977 statement on Black feminism, lesbianism, and intersectionality: “We are actively committed to struggling against racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression, and see as our particular task the development of integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression are interlocking. … If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”

“Boston was the most sophisticated place [in the 1970s and ‘80s] when it came to gay literature, gay activism, gay culture, gay criticism,” says Jackson Davidow, who curated the exhibition. “I think it had to do with the students and Boston being a university town that wasn’t fully gentrified yet. I think it had a lot do with the counterculture of the ‘60s,” as gay liberation movements build upon the preceding civil rights movement.

Walker (1953–2003) is also the subject of a companion exhibition in the neighboring gallery, “Christian Walker: The Profane and the Poignant.” The Springfield native moved to Boston in 1974 before relocating to Atlanta in the mid ‘80s. The Walker survey was originally organized by Davidow and Noam Parness for New York’s Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art. Both shows appear here with assistance from Tufts University Art Galleries Curator Laurel V. McLaughlin.

Davidow says the timeframe of “As the World Burns” roughly corresponds to when Walker was in Boston, but also Davidow was “wanting to think more about ‘70s and ‘80s gay life and sex culture before the onset of AIDS.”

We see people finding friends and lovers and joy, people redefining themselves and forging their own communities at Boston area bars and nightclubs and pornographic movie theaters, sheltered from the virulent, violent homophobia of the dominant culture. There are furtive glimpses and people striking poses as well as unguarded smiles. “This was street family,” Jason Byron Gavann told Davidow in 2023.

The photos come from the time before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that anti-sodomy laws used to target queer people were unconstitutional. Only this January, did Massachusetts legislators begin the process to strike such laws from the books.

A 1973 photo by Allen Frame shows Nan Goldin photographing at Boston drag bar The Other Side. “Being at The Other Side was very empowering because it was our world,” Bobby Busnach told Brian Halligan in a 2013 interview for The History Project.

Other photos document the Boston bar Together, the Boston lesbian bar The Saints, and Gay Liberation Front’s dance parties at Boston’s Charles Street Meeting House, where Gay Community News first operated. Photos by Gail Thacker and Philin Phlash document a 1980 fashion show at the Boston punk and new wave nightclub Spit—“from laboriously getting ready to go out to the aftermath of the evening’s festivities: washing body paint off in the tub, exhausted, or lying in the arms of a lover,” a gallery sign explains.

For many, these activities were “very undercover,” as Craig Bailey says. “I wanted some separation in my life. I wasn’t, as they say now, bringing my whole self to work. … That’s why there were so many bars. Because that’s where people could go and feel safe. Now that we’re more readily accepted in the general culture those bars have disappeared slowly.”

“As the World Burns” looks at scrappy exuberant communities formed around local art schools—the Museum School, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, New England School of Photography, Boston University. The exhibition digs into the photography published by the local gay press—Gay Community News, Fag Rag, Boston Gay Review, Bad Attitude. “The press was really significant for visualizing what lesbian and gay life looked like in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Davidow says. And the exhibition highlights festive, personal snapshots that, Davidow says, are “much more about preserving the immediacy of moments and documenting spaces.”

There was a danger inherent in being seen in these photos as the dominant culture threatened queer folks then—and now. “I do think there’s a tension between the desire to protect people and the desire to make public these amazing people and amazing experiences,” Davidow says.

Walker photographed in the Combat Zone, Boston’s red light district of strip clubs, burlesque bars and porno movie houses. In 1982, he also recorded friends in Fort Hill Faggots for Freedom, “a radical living collective of more than 20 gay people” in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood.

The grainy, almost spectral photos of Walker’s 1983-84 “The Theater Project” survey the Pilgrim Theater, including “bathrooms where men and trans people cruise and hook up,” according to a gallery sign. Located in the Combat Zone, the theater screened straight porn, but “attracted audiences overwhelmingly in search of homosexual encounters—even if many of these men were closeted in the straight world and did not identify as gay.”

When some of these photos were published in Fag Rag in 1983, Boston Licensing Commissioner Joanne Prevost Anzalone got a copy and used it as evidence of “kinky gays” to shut the theater down for some days, Davidow says. Walker told Gay Community News at the time: “It’s a very outrageous situation that a document, a piece of art, is used as a way of harassing men. . . . There’s a strong historical basis for sex going on in theaters in Boston—it’s been going on for 40 years.”

The 1980s were also the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, and touring the exhibition, it can be hard not to feel haunted by all the lives lost—including Polaroid photographer and Super 8 filmmaker Mark Morrisroe, who is depicted here in the photos of that 1980 fashion show at Spit, and died of AIDS in 1989 at age 30.

Craig Bailey moved to the Boston suburbs in 1982 when he was hired as a customer service rep for an auto manufacturer. After a buyout in 1989, he moved to Somerville then Boston, and took a photography class at the Boston Center for Adult Education that proved to be a launching pad. He photographed events, freelanced for newspapers, and found part-time community outreach work, especially around AIDS prevention.

In the 1990s, as the AIDS pandemic entered its second decade, people rethought safe sex education—experimenting with sexy how-tos that also tried to reach more diverse audiences. An example is the explicit sexy photography in the brochure “Color Me Healthy: Safer Sex Guide for Gay Men,” which was published by the Fenway Community Health Center in 1994. It was conceived by Craig Hickman, now a Maine state senator, to reach people of color. Bailey, who took the brochure’s photos, says, “The idea was, ‘Look, if you’re trying to tell people something, you need to speak plainly and directly,’ and that was what that brochure was trying to do.”

“Craig Hickman pulled all of that together. We shot it in my living room,” Bailey recalls. He developed the photos himself at the Boston Photo Co-op in Jamaica Plain. “That was the first roll of film I developed because I didn’t want to hand it to someone else and say, ‘Can you develop this for me?’”

Bailey also photographed theatrical productions and made publicity photos for The Theater Offensive, an LGBTQ+ company, and other theater troupes. “I entered into what I believe to be a cultural renaissance in terms of the gay Black community in Boston,” Bailey says. “So many of the people I knew, friends in community, were bringing everything they had to the table in so many ways, all the creativity they had.”

Related:

• Craig Bailey’s ‘Faces of AIDS’ Photographs Of ‘My Friends That I Lost’

• ‘Eulogy For The Dyke Bar’ Ponders The ‘Mass Closing’ Of Lesbian Bars

---

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content ©Greg Cook 2024 or the respective creators.)

Pub Choir is an Australia-based organization that gets large crowds singing popular tunes, in three-part harmony no less.

Everybody can sing. Like, not well, but literally. Why should being average at something stop you from doing it!? It hasn’t yet… Singing is good for you, it’s EASY, and Pub Choir is here to show you how.

With a show that is equal parts music, comedy, and beer, Pub Choir is a euphoric sensation that transforms a crowd of tipsy strangers into a legendary choir.

By the end of the show the YOU will be belting out a popular song in three-part harmony.

In the video above, they get a crowd of 1600 people signing Creep by Radiohead. Beautiful.

You can find more of their performances on their YouTube channel, including Tina Turner’s The Best, Africa by Toto, and Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty.

See also Choir! Choir! Choir! and their performances of Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U and David Byrne singing David Bowie’s Heroes. (thx, matthew)

Tags: music · Pub Choir · Radiohead · remix · video

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

On trimming the silence from our lives. “One of the more distressing qualities of humanity, in my mind, is the emphasis we collectively put on efficiency.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Kate Wagner (from McMansion Hell) was sent to an F1 race by Road & Track and the resulting article was published and then, poof, vanished. (Archived here!) “If you wanted to turn someone into a socialist you could [show them] the paddock of a Formula 1 race.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

In every issue, the quarterly Buddhist magazine Tricycle publishes a winning haiku from its ongoing monthly haiku contest. The poem appears alongside a column written by the contest’s judge, poet and author Clark Strand. This season’s haiku-adjacent column includes the following bit, about one theory on the nature of haiku:

The Japanese haiku critic Kenkichi Yamamoto (1907–1988) believed that the best haiku strike a balance between humor and existential isolation. “Loneliness in life and the comical elements of life are two sides of the same coin,” he wrote. As a genre of literature, haiku thrives on the flip of that coin — the small element of uncertainty that challenges our ordinary understanding of the world.

I hadn’t realized there were such things as haiku critics (!). I also like the idea of loneliness and humor being related somehow.

Read the Spring 2024 winning haiku here. And enter the monthly contest here. (The next round must include the word “turnip.”)

Tags: Clark Strand · haiku · language · poetry · Tricycle

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Linda

“I’m wearing a 30s/40s patchwork quilt robe, vintage Levi’s, vintage mesh top, vintage loafers, and a 60s whimsical print purse. I am always drawn to pieces that emphasize beautiful craftsmanship, attention to detail and pieces that are uncommon.”

Oct 15, 2023 ∙ Industry City

“I follow Vanderpump Rules, the Housewives of various locales. It’s not about liking it, it’s about seeing how people choose to perform themselves in public. To see the brutality and the cruelty. We’re living in an incredible time — which is a car crash of narcissism and voyeurism.”

Can’t wait to see Barbara Kruger’s Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You at The Serpentine. If anyone can hold up a mirror to society right now, it’s Babs. Buckle up!

Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You opens today, until 17th March at Serpentine South. Read more here.

WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGE: Barbara Kruger: Thinking of You. I Mean Me. I Mean You.,(Installation view, 1 February – 17 March 2024, Serpentine South)
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here

CLICK HERE to get Disneyrollergirl blog posts straight to your inbox once a week
CLICK HERE to buy my book, The New Garconne: How to be a Modern Gentlewoman
CLICK HERE to buy my beauty book, Face Values: The New Beauty Rituals and Skincare Secrets

Azzedine Alaïa didn't follow the traditional fashion calendar — he'd show when he was ready, or when he wanted. Pieter Mulier, now the keeper of the late designer's legacy as the creative director of his namesake brand, has adopted a slightly more structured approach, still honoring that spirit of ...

Continue reading

In 1953, shortly after taking office and Joseph Stalin’s death, President Dwight Eisenhower gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors that has come to be known as the Chance for Peace speech.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Some 70 years later, the theft not only continues but has been outsourced around the world and into our communities. (via clayton cubitt)

Tags: Dwight Eisenhower · war

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

I had no idea this existed: back in 2015, rapper Warren G and saxophonist Kenny G came together to perform Warren G’s Regulate. Now, I’m not sure the smooth jazz saxophone improves the song at all, but I love that some mad genius was like, we need to get the two Gs together and then made it happen.

Tags: Kenny G · music · remix · video · Warren G

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

How We Turned the Tide in the Roach Wars. “Forty years ago, scientists did the impossible. Why doesn’t anyone remember? […] The people who invented Combat are American heroes.” (Read/listen to the end…fascinating!)

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

2023 may have been the year of the bob, but Katie Holmes is already making a case for 2024's next "it" hairstyle.  The actor was spotted in New York City Tuesday with none other than... side bangs. The hairstyle that dominated the mid-to-late aughts is seemingly the grown-out ...

Continue reading

Kurt Bloch, a German Jew hiding in the crawl space of a Dutch attic, published 95 editions of a zine from 1943 to 1945.

Each issue included original art, poetry and songs that often took aim at the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators. Bloch, writing in both German and Dutch, mocked Nazi propaganda, responded to war news and offered personal perspectives on wartime deprivations.

Each edition consisted of a single copy that was passed around to trusted readers and, incredibly, all 95 copies have survived to the present day.

Each edition of Bloch’s magazine consisted of just a single copy. But it may have been read by as many as 20 to 30 people, Groeneveld estimated.

“There was huge organization behind him, which included couriers, who brought food, but who could also bring the magazine out, to share with other people in the group who could be trusted,” Groeneveld said. “The magazines are very small, you can easily put one in your pocket or hide it in a book. He got them all back. They must have also returned them in some way.”

(via open culture)

Tags: Kurt Bloch · magazines · Nazis · war · World War II

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Hey, quick question: When did sweaters get so — for lack of a better word — bad? We at Fashionista have been trying to answer this very inquiry all fall, since comedian Ellory Smith took to X back in September: "The quality of sweaters has declined so greatly in the last [20] years that I think it ...

Continue reading

It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is about to roll up again, but I am ready. I love Thanksgiving. As the food holiday I have claimed it pretty much as my own. I start thinking about decorations and menus pretty much the minute the dishes are cleared away. I test Thanksgiving recipes in the middle of summer! I freeze farmers market green beans and corn in at the height of August in preparation. Sweet potatoes, pumpkins, cranberries! I love it all, and I use them in both sweet and savory dishes. Pie plays a central roll on the Thanksgiving table, so this year I present a lovely cranberry tart with a snappy ginger cookie crust. It is simple to make and packs a ton of flavor, plus the vibrant color is lovely on the table. The filling in this pie is rich, curdy and custardy, with a sweet-tart flavor set of by the sharp ginger in the crust. It’s an autumnal version of key lime pie. I love this for Thanksgiving, but it is equally suited to Christmas.

I love the puckery ginger of the gingersnap crust, but I have also made this with speculoos cookies which is delicious. Any cookie crust will do really. I add an egg white to the mix so the crust is compact and doesn’t crumble completely when you slice it.  You need some juice to make the filling of this pie work, and I recommend 100% cranberry juice – not cocktail or blend – those contain sugar, corn syrup, apple juice and other fillers. You can find 100% juice at healthier stores, but it can be a little pricey and may come in a larger bottle than you want, so I sometimes substitute 100% pomegranate juice, which has the same tartness and a brilliant red color. Either works well. You can serve it straight up, piled with whipped cream or just dolloped. I like to whip some cream with a little powdered sugar and a little of the cranberry or pomegranate juice.

The post Cranberry Gingersnap Pie appeared first on The Runaway Spoon.

I love love love these rainbow rugs by Ken Kelleher.

Great story about going to see Galaxy Quest in an empty theater near the end of its run. “The projectionist strode down the aisle toward me [and] my first thought was that the matinee was canceled due to low turnout…”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Completely in love with this art installation by Rafael Sommerhalder.

Jessette

“I am wearing a Maison Kitsune skirt suit, Dior bralette, a Helmut Lang bra bag, and a hat made by Jason Murillo. My rings are Givenchy, Wildfox, David Yurman, and Vivienne Westwood. I look for inspiration through the eclecticism of New York City including the artists and brands I collaborate with in my editorial work.“

Sep 8, 2023 ∙ Tribeca

I don't know about you, but the title "The Blood Collages of John Bingley Garland (ca. 1850–60)" made me click pretty damn fast to see what sort of Victorian age shenanigans this dude was up to. From the Public Domain Review:

The Blood Book is handmade, folio-sized, with a handsome marbled endpaper and forty-three pages of exquisitely crafted decoupage. John Bingley Garland, the manuscript's creator, used collage techniques, excising illustrations from other books to assemble elegant, balanced compositions. Most of the source material is Romantic engravings by William Blake and his ilk, but there are also brilliantly colored flowers and fruits. Snakes are a favorite motif, butterflies another. A small bird is centered on every page. The space between the images is filled with tiny hand-written script that reads like a staccato sermon. "One! yet has larger bounties! to bestow! Joys! Powers! untasted! In a World like this, Powers!" etc.

The book's reputation, however, rests on a decorative detail that overwhelms: To each page, Garland added languid, crimson drops in red India ink, hanging from the cut-out images like pendalogues from a chandelier. Blood drips from platters of grapes and tree boughs, statuaries and skeletons. Crosses seep, a cheetah drools, angels dangle bloody sashes. A bouquet of white chrysanthemums is spritzed.

To be clear, Garland's blood is not that of surgery or crime or menses, but of religious iconography. He obviously intended the blood to represent Christ's own.

The Blood Book are strikingly modern; as PDR states, Garland uses "techniques usually dated to Cubism in the early twentieth century" to make his collages. I love running across seemingly out-of-time objects like this.

Tags: art · John Bingley Garland · religion

Love this recent JWST shot of the M51 spiral galaxy.

The graceful winding arms of the grand-design spiral galaxy M51 stretch across this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike the menagerie of weird and wonderful spiral galaxies with ragged or disrupted spiral arms, grand-design spiral galaxies boast prominent, well-developed spiral arms like the ones showcased in this image. This galactic portrait was captured by Webb's Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI).

In this image the reprocessed stellar light by dust grains and molecules in the medium of the galaxy illuminate a dramatic filamentary medium. Empty cavities and bright filaments alternate and give the impression of ripples propagating from the spiral arms. The yellow compact regions indicate the newly formed star clusters in the galaxy.

(via bad astronomy)

Tags: astronomy · James Webb Space Telescope · NASA · photography · science · space