JAMDrops

Illinois is the first state to ban AI therapists Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed a bill banning AI therapists into law, the first in the nation.

Illinois has banned AI therapy, making it the first state to regulate the use of AI in mental health services.

www.engadget.com/ai/illinois-...

The song of the summer is the South Park theme song.

Half the fun of the lore surrounding Hofman's ducks are when things go wrong. They’ve broken their moorings once after a flood and once after an earthquake. One was violently deflated when someone stabbed it.

This public artwork is a crowdpleaser. Hofman’s ducks have brought joy to families of coastal cities around the world. The artist enlarged everyone's favorite palm-sized bathtub toy into a floating giant. He's launched them into the waters of coastal cities around the world like kawaii kaijus.

The photograph shows a four-story high inflatable rubber duck floating in a harbor full of boats by a seaside town.

Today’s ArtDrop is a titanic pop art inflatable ‘Rubber Duck’ by Florentijn Hofman.

Aelita is super fun

I forgot about that song. It was good.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons of a mosaic floor featuring a catalog of marine life in earth tones on a field of dark background tesserae. There are approximately 16 species swimming around in this image: lobster, octopus, squid, shellfish, eels, flounder, etc. They all gaze up at you as if you are looking down through a glass bottom boat.

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This is one of the many ancient treasures reclaimed from the ash and pumice of Vesuvius by archaeologists working in Pompeii.

Today’s ArtDrop is the ‘Aquatic Sea Life Mosaic' from the House of the Faun in Pompeii by an unknown artist.

generative AI is a humanities simulator for people who think students should only learn STEM

Opportunities for Artists, Writers, and Art Workers in August 2025 Residencies, fellowships, grants, and open calls from Foundwork, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Princeton University, and more in our monthly list of opportunities for artists, writers, and art...

Hyperallegic's monthly listing of opportunities for artists hyperallergic.com/1031024/oppo...

It is hard to believe that the same city commissioning exuberant fancies like this also gave us the stark and minimal International Style of architecture a few decades later. This is one of the many architectural (and public art) wonders to see on a walking tour of Chicago’s Loop district.

The dark color, the arches above the door, and large quatrefoil-type windows above them contribute to the design’s gothic interpretation. Above the windows of the second story is a bronze bas relief frieze with more organic ornament. The building is white above the second floor.

​The three photos show various details and views of the corner entrance of a department store built on a busy Chicago shopping street in 1899. The entrance is made of lacy organic flourishes of black cast iron.

Today’s ArtDrop is the cast iron ornamental grand entrance of the Sullivan Center Building, 1. South State Street, Chicago by architect Louis Sullivan. It is internet famous as “The Goth Target”.

Edgar Degas - The Pond in the Forest - ca.1868

What you may not realize is this humble-looking artwork is a creation of a wizard who paints with planetary forces on a canvas of hubris to create a work of awe. It’s a mile long field of steel lightning rods meant to come to life during electrical storms.

If you come upon this piece in the New Mexico desert on a typical day you may be underwhelmed. You will see 400 steel poles arranged 220 feet apart in a rectangle.

From the artist’s foundation website: "The Lightning Field (1977), by the American sculptor Walter De Maria, is a work of Land Art situated in a remote area of the high desert of western New Mexico. It is comprised of 400 polished stainless-steel poles installed in a grid array measuring one mile by one kilometer. The poles—two inches in diameter and averaging 20 feet, 7½ inches in height—are spaced 220 feet apart and have solid, pointed tips that define a horizontal plane. A sculpture to be walked in as well as viewed, The Lightning Field is intended to be experienced over an extended period of time. A full experience of The Lightning Field does not depend upon the occurrence of lightning, and visitors are encouraged to spend as much time as possible in the field, especially during sunset and sunrise.”

Today’s ArtDrop is ‘Lightning Field’, an earthwork, by Walter de Maria.

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A huge, colorful white-tailed deer sculpture. Its legs look like gnarled purple tree trunks, and there are leaves sprouting from its antlers. The deer stands in a wood chip-lined clearing in front of a copse of evergreen trees. The legs look a little mushy in this picture because I used a magic eraser tool to remove a group of children (who were gathered around the deer's legs) from the photo.

A huge pink and blue sandhill crane sculpture. The bird is standing with its wings spread wide and its head arches slightly back. A pond, walking path, and trees are visible in the background.

A blue and gold dragonfly sculpture with intricate metalwork wings sits perched on a huge bright green and yellow metal blade of grass. The gold stripes on the side of the dragonfly are sculpted to look like a frog and a bird (maybe a kingfisher?). A path runs to the right of the sculpture and disappears around a bend under a group of large trees.

A massive orange snail with a rainbow-colored shell sits in the center of a wood chip lined area. The snail looks like it's tilting its head inquisitively to one side. There are large leaves in fall colors painted on its yellow underside.

Today was an absolutely beautiful day to spend at the Morton Arboretum with friends.

The Vivid Creatures sculptures were fantastic 😍

It's my mind palace

YouTube video by VernissageTV Kathleen Ryan: Bad Fruit / François Ghebaly, Los Angeles

Watch this excellent YouTube video by VernissageTV with detail shots of the sculptures from a gallery reception: youtu.be/HU0LwQz4OdQ

Ryan’s sculptures of oversized rotting fruit both repel and attract. They should be disgusting but the semiprecious beads are sensual and luscious even when they are representing teeming colonies of fungi and rot. The emotional tension makes her work unforgettable.

How can you look at this piece without a sense of nostalgia? It recalls summer road trips, camping, and picnics. As our wistful memories of days gone by morph and change with time, associations like that of a camper with summer fruit creates a memory chimera.

Image shows a large white gallery space with tall white support beam a little off center. On the floor, the artist installed five irregular fragments that resemble fragments of a giant, rotting, smashed watermelon. The rind of the watermelon is made out fragments of the shell of an Airstream camping trailer. The pink pulp of the fruit is made out of semi precious stones with a few rusty cast-iron flies crawling over the mouldering flesh. Imagine what an AirStream trailer watermelon would look like before it was smashed. The shape resembles a watermelon.

Today’s ArtDrop is an installation of contemporary still life sculptures, ‘Bad Melon’ by Kathleen Ryan. The photo is from the artist's website: www.kathleen-ryan.com.

If you see this post a castle.

Since @peterhuestis.bsky.social has informed us that today is National Watermelon Day, here's "Viva la Vida" ("Live Life"), reportedly the last picture Frida Kahlo painted before her untimely death in 1954 at age 47