It’s another First Thursday in Seattle, which means that the galleries and museums keep their doors open and lights on til late to entice gawkers and buyers inside.

Sean O’Neill—an up-and-coming glass worker—is having a solo show this month, and judging from the photos above, his monochromatic work has become even stronger. Glass that simulates the corona of some dark sun? I’m on board.

Fantastically creative video by the New Zealand Book Council. I find it a little strange that this is a video whose goal is to goad people to read, considering how it focuses on the crazy things that can be done when pages are used for things other than reading. In any case, extremely cool!

Song: “Ljósið” by Olafur Arnalds. Video by Esteban Diacono.

I have heard a couple of people comment that someone needs to make a visualizer application of this effect, and I agree: it’s hypnotic, it’s beautiful and mesmerizing. I could watch it all day. But if this effect could be used for any song you had lying around in your catalog, it would render this song and its unique video unremarkable. And that would be a utter shame.

I’ve had three songs from Marina and the Diamonds’ album on heavy rotation for about two months now, and I have been trying to come up with an excuse to post this very song. Now, there is one: it’s got a video, and it uses some wacky body art based on the work of Lucy McRae.

All well and good. But, I have a beef with this video, and it is this: it isn’t weird enough. For any other poppy song, sure, this is weird. But this is a seriously off-the-wall song, full of odd sound effects and freaky interludes. I feel like the all-white wall should have been some wild jungle pattern, that things should have been popping in and out of frame with abandon (muppets! puppets!) and that titular lead singer Marina should have broken out of her dead-face expression at least once. I feel like she’s trying to give me sexy face, with her heavy-lidded pout -pout lips, but…you’re bouncing on puppet limbs and singing about spooks and silver spoons chasing you. Nothing in that is inherently sexy. (I…don’t think?)

But, there are accordion legs and arms, so I guess it’s enough. Hmph.

The first webcomic I ever read was a slightly messy, totally lovable black and white affair, painstakingly drawn every week by a college student with a chronic case of carpal tunnel. It was about vampires in the French Revolution.

Don’t laugh! Or do, as it was utterly hilarious. That was back in 2000, and while Bite Me! has lain completed since 2004, Dylan Meconis’ poor wrist is still taking a beating.

Ten years later and she’s still at it—this time sans vampires, and hopefully sans carpal tunnel. Her current opus-in-progress is Family Man, which concerns the life of a fictitious German theologian as he travels Europe in 1768. When Luther Levy finds employment in a university filled with eccentric professors and a mysterious librarian, he begins to wonder where Reason will lead him after all.

What, that doesn’t sound funny? It’s not meant to be. No daily punchlines, no anachronistic references, and the only puns are those on Christian theology. In German. Nevertheless, it is one of the most audacious, illuminating and entertaining pieces I have ever had the pleasure of reading (online and otherwise). Granted, that’s coming from a history geek, but the sumptuous art and underlying mysteries should be tempting enough for any reader to jump on board. Wagon. Carriage. Whatever.

Exhaustively researched, skillfully drawn and intelligently written, Meconis is slowly unveiling her vision of the Age of Enlightenment through her rain-washed art and crackling scholastic debate. Even her research notes sparkle with wit and energy; whether she’s lamenting a dearth of accurate carriage designs on the web or apologizing for depicting a prop that wasn’t invented til a decade later.

Updating only once a week, Family Man isn’t a marathon comic: there are a grand total of two full chapters thus far, and once you’ve read them the wait seems interminable for the next page. However, when you recognize the detail she puts into her work (one notable example above) you can appreciate why each page takes a full week to come to completion.

But, if Bite Me! was any indication, this artist has the tenacity and vision to take us along on the journey all the way to the end of her epic. Read up on Spinoza and Voltaire, savor the artwork, and join a loyal readership as they follow the stately progression that is Family Man.

The Polite Umbrella, designed and built by NYC-based Korean artist Joo Youn Paek. Also the maker—and modeler—of the “Pillowig.”

Clearly the output of someone who has lived in and contemplated the use and misuse of dense urban areas. If I had a pillow wig I doubt I’d ever take it off—after all, it’s the best part of sleeping, and diminishes the spectre of bedhead.

“Warmth, Giant Black Toobs” by (Seattle artist) Susan Robb

The above video was taken on the Discovery Green in Houston. Part of an outdoor four-part summer exhibition, entitled Lighter than Air, “Toobs” was apparently first displayed in Seattle in 2007. Where was I?! This looks so neat.

The toobs are made of black polypropylene garbage bags, 50 feet tall, and filled with air. As they are warmed by the sun and moved by the wind, the tubes rise and fall, moving like hairs or organic wormy things.

“Because the air inside the ‘toobs’ is hotter than the air outside, the tubes soar, bump into each other, recoil, faint dead away and climb into the sky again,” wrote Regina Hackett back in 07 for the P-I.

Damn neat.