What’s Happening: Through scores of plant-like sculptures scattered across 160 acres, artist Marguerite Humeau mounts a sprawling ode to the resilient wildlife that has acclimated to the San Luis Valley’s inhospitable conditions.

The Download: Before she was tapped to create a monumental earthwork in Colorado’s expansive San Luis Valley, the French-born artist Marguerite Humeau had never experienced a landscape so vast. But she quickly warmed to the high alpine desert’s excessively arid, inhospitable conditions, coming around to revere the plant life—sagebrush, tumbleweeds, potatoes, barley—that flourish within the region as superheroes. “The sun is really hot in the summer and it’s very cold in the winter,” she says. “There are extreme winds and lots of sand, so as soon as the wind picks up it becomes like a huge sandblaster.”

Her earthwork, called Orisons and commissioned by the Denver-based Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum, pays tribute to the landscape by minimally disrupting it. Scattered across 160 acres of the region’s sagebrush-spotted sand are 84 wood, metal, and ceramic sculptures invoking the site’s history as an improbable home for not only resilient wildlife, but Ute Indians and Mexican settlers. Dozens of rhythmic, plant-like sculptures draw inspiration from native flora and become whistling instruments in harsh winds. Others mimic the migratory sandhill crane’s sleek silhouette, allowing tired visitors to rest in their netted, hammock-like wings.

Orisons may strike some as a stark contrast to more overt Land Art opuses, such as Michael Heizer’s concrete City and Robert Smithson’s hypnotic Spiral Jetty, that disrupt the landscape around them. Humeau’s research involved meeting locals with deep ties to the land, from a member of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to the fourth-generation farmers operating the valley’s Jones Farm Organics. She walked away with newfound reverence for the region and the intention to “resuscitate or reactivate ecosystems that have gone extinct,” she says. “I was thinking of worlds without humans—before humans existed or after we disappeared. But it’s urgent to think about the world in which we coexist and how we do that.”

In Their Own Words: “The intention is to connect everything—every being with every being, every history with every history,” says Cortney Stell, the Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum’s director and chief curator. “[It’s] intended to help folks realize that it’s not man and nature, that we are nature, and everything is sort of connected.”

Surface Says: Fun fact: Orisons is one of the largest earthworks of its kind created by a woman artist.

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In the heart of Athens’ Psirri district, a former textile factory has been artfully transformed into Mona, a 20-room boutique hotel by hospitality group House of Shila. New York–based entrepreneur Shai Antebi and Greek photographer Eftihia Stefanidi retained the original 1950s structure’s industrial charm, with features such as an iron staircase, expansive metal windows, and weathered concrete walls, their layers of paint stripped to reveal a rich patina.

The hotel’s aesthetic harmoniously blends old and new, with wood furniture, velvet upholstery, and mismatched chairs and tables providing a warm, lived-in contrast to the industrial backdrop. The street-level lobby doubles as a multi-use lounge and café, hosting events and installations, while a speakeasy-style bar resides in the basement. Embracing a “shoppable stay” concept, guests can purchase any object on display, from bed linens to ceramic coffee mugs.

This past weekend, the Robert Wilson–founded arts center on the South Fork of Long Island hosted its annual summer benefit and debut of Regina Jose Galindo’s exhibition “The Body.” Guests were treated to live performances by Wilson and Jose Galindo, as well as the center’s current artists in residence. Mother Nature crashed the party, opening the skies for a downpour that soaked sets, performers, and guests alike. With libations from Wölffer Estate, Campari, and Aperol in hand, guests rallied for the rain-soaked night of festivities in support of the center’s artist residency and education programs.

When was it? July 29

Where was it? The Watermill Center, New York

Who was there? Daniel Arsham, Kelly Behun, Coco Fusco, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Gabrielle Richardson.

When: Until Oct. 7

Where: Hannah Traore Gallery, New York

What: Falquez, a Mexico City–born photographer, and Alba, a scholar and multimedia artist, explore the human voice’s mystical and transformative power in their collaborative listening experience at Hannah Traore Gallery. Through studio-recorded sound, live performance, and video footage of lively religious celebrations and carnivals in Cuba and New Orleans, the duo charts a throughline between the technical precision of vocal training and its ability to channel the divine. A red listening room rounds out the experience and will host a live performance by Colombian-born singer Carolina Oliveros, who features prominently in the exhibition’s various soundscapes.

Climatologists may be scrambling over the recent streak of sweltering heat that’s practically cooking Phoenix alive, but parts of Europe are grappling with a different type of extreme weather. Last month, several frighteningly large hailstones were collected across parts of Italy and Croatia with a record-shattering 6.3-inch diameter. But that record was broken just a few days later, when a 7.5-inch hailstone was found in the small Italian town of Azzano Decimo. How do volleyball-size hailstones form? Supercells, which have strong rotating updrafts, can support hailstones and keep them suspended long enough so they grow to staggering sizes.

Submaterial creates thoughtful and precisely handcrafted design pieces for modern interiors. In their simplicity and beauty, these works explore the territory between objects of art and objects of design. Submaterial has always focused on natural and sustainable materials such as wool felt, cork, wood, and leather. These materials are fashioned by hand into beautifully surfaced wallcoverings, panels, and screens by skilled fabricators using environmentally conscious and lean manufacturing processes.

Surface Says: Submaterial harnesses the elegance and beauty of natural materials like wood, leather, and wool to create its selection of handcrafted artwork and décor.

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