Amsterdam-based painter Femke Hiemstra has a new show of paintings at Seattle's Roq La Rue Gallery. Seen above, "Death Of A Ghost." The show, titled "Bonjour, Dachshund!," is hanging alongside work by Junko Mizuno. From Roq La Rue:
Femke Hiemstra’s meticulously tight, jewel like mixed media paintings and exquisitely rendered black and white drawings are homes to a dark fairytale land where inanimate objects come to life and frolic with animal neighbors. Lollipops become ship captains, strawberries become giant wrestlers, and vegetables become Halloween gods with lantern eyes. Femke occasionally uses typography in her work, using words from various languages and letters in her paintings to further enhance the narrative while still retaining a playful sense of mystery, or as a visual device to frame in the scenery, as if you were looking at her world through a secret window. She also uses found objects to paint on, such as boxes and wrappers, to create imaginary products with magical properties.Femke Hiemstra and Junko Mizuno at Roq La Rue

The experiment was conducted over three days: the memory was formed in the first day, rewritten on the second day, and tested for fear on the third day. However, to examine how enduring this effect is, a portion of the participants was tested again about a year later. Even after this period of time, the fear memory did not return in those subjects who had extinction during the reconsolidation window. These results suggest that the old fear memory was changed from its original form and that this change persists over time...

Michael Gruber's The Forgery of Venus combines art history, criminal mischief, and the sleaziness of the contemporary art gallery business to deliver a terrifically fun thriller-esque novel.
Some people in Verona, Italy are up in arms about a nativity scene at their local courthouse in which Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are depicted as dark-skinned people. Interestingly, it was chief public prosecutor Mario Giulio Schinaia's idea to do this based on historical evidence that baby Jesus was in fact likely to have had darker skin.
DukeThomson
Dark-skinned nativity scene angers conservatives in Verona
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Epic Disney/Marvel mashup
graphicsman
Win an Envy 15 laptop for your prime-cut literary travesties
Boondocker
Dark-skinned nativity scene angers conservatives in Verona
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Ian70
Tool-using animals: Now with 100% more invertebrates!
BarelyFitz
Tool-using animals: Now with 100% more invertebrates!
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Epic Disney/Marvel mashup