Written by Mikail Haroon (@mvkail) / Curated by the Welcome team
This is our eighth iteration of Monthly Discoveries, our recurring series where the Welcome team rounds up and shares what we discovered on the internet this past month.
Paid subscribers can revisit the previous seven editions here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
September’s eclectic assortment includes a mirror made of 450 motorized penguins, a lamp built from a cow’s spine, Thom Browne SS27 insect-shaped shoes, a two-day ambient concert aboard a boat, portraits grown from human mold spores, and more.
Happy discovering.
various images of stuffed animals by Trinity Ace
Trinity Ace is a California-based alt-country musician, who has opened for Elias Rønnenfelt, and also a visual archivist who curates the account @dieselsugar. This collection focuses on “bumper plushies,” stuffed animals strapped to the front bumpers of trucks. The tradition grew out of Japanese Domestic Market (JDM) car culture, particularly the bosozoku and drifting scenes.
Soccer tattoo by @tatdatjawn
@tatdatjawn is a New York–based tattoo artist known for colorful, tapestry-like compositions and doodle-style illustrations packed with detail. When a commenter asked whether “antistyle” tattoos were a trend nowadays, the artist replied that his work is, on the contrary, “extra style.” His soccer tattoo from last week is one of our favorites; he manages to fit 10 players in mid-action, tangled and nestled around the letters of the word “SOCCER.”
Gun makeup by @bad___blood___
Using a fine tip liquid black eyeliner, @bad___blood___’s gun makeup look delicately traces an AK-47 rifle across her eyelid.
loneliness…... …. … by Seungmin Kim
Seungmin Kim’s 2024 work loneliness..... .... ..., made in Paris, is a low-resolution digital photo series depicting a lone rudimentary model figure inside a small architectural model. In every frame, a yellow character sits in cold, liminal isolation. The setting is somewhere between a prison, an abandoned hotel, and a waiting room. Details on the piece are sparse, and the only text accompanying it is the caption: “nothing is touching the person, except the sentiments. some moments are not meant to be seen.”
2000s Korean street art curated by @wonofgo
@wonofgo is an archive page curating a very specific kind of 2000s Korean art, pulled from commercial signage, advertisements, and magazines. The art style is known as vector illustration, and recurring visual motifs include ultra-skinny silhouettes, cat-like eyes, and saturated and gradient color palettes. In Korea this art style was commonly found at noraebangs (karaoke bars), local hair salons, Hof bars (beer halls) and nighttime lounges.
残像のリプレイ or Afterimage Replay by Yuka Numata
残像のリプレイ/Afterimage Replay is an installation by Yuka Numata in Gero, Japan, a rural town best known for its hot springs. The installation draws on the memories of the students who attended the former Yuya Elementary School, which was slated for closure. Numata reimagines the experiences of its students through gentle, fuzzy, memory-like traces which appear “transferred into the space from another place or time.” The installation’s rural location reflects a broader trend in Japan of bringing contemporary art to the countryside and repurposing underused public buildings.
Cow Vertebrae lamp by Algol
Algol is an Arizona-based sculptor and interior designer who often makes lamps out of the bones and vertebrae of deceased animals (most of which he finds in the desert himself). This particular lamp stands 6’3” tall, built from a cow vertebrae, a vintage cast-iron base, and a custom shade. It was featured at the Salt Lake City Oddities and Curiosities Expo last month. Algol’s practice is grounded in zero-waste principles, with the rest of his materials primarily sourced from vintage antiques and fabrics.
Exotic flowers/mold garden by Dasha Plesen
Dasha Plesen is a bio-artist whose practice begins with a handful of spores brushed from someone’s skin, which she then feeds and grows over several weeks until they bloom into a colorful, one-of-a-kind mold colony. Each colony is photographed through a macro lens, scanned, and digitized. Then, the original bio-portrait is sterilized with ethylene gas and sealed permanently in epoxy. What makes Plesen’s pieces so distinctive is the complexity of color and texture in each colony, and the gradients and surface variation she can control through her command of the mold-growth process.
OK Computer by @etolayetdinozavr
@etolayetdinozavr is a Russian painter and muralist. We came across his latest graffiti piece in a Moscow train station: a tightly contained composition of purple, black, and red lines resembling audio waveforms. The piece’s vertical lines both contrast with and blend into the station’s dirty tile grid, immersing the work in its surroundings while still catching the eye of passersby. You can observe his process for this piece here.
ceiling service vol. 11 by SIMMONS and ceiling service
ceiling service is a Seoul-based immersive listening and rest series founded in 2024 by Joon Kwak. The experience subverts the stimulation and chaos of a typical concert, replacing seats with beds, a concept which in varying forms has steadily spread through creative spaces around the world, most notably through events like Ambient Church in New York (which has featured ambient performances from James Ferraro, James K, Juliana Huxtable, and many others). A typical session moves attendees through guided meditations, live ambient performances, and a gong journey, with each session lasting 4 hours. Volume 11, however, held last month, was an interesting departure from this format: it took attendees on a two-day journey aboard a two-story boat down the Han River.