The Battersea Power Station in London is set to receive a major overhaul, from a giant rotting waste of a power plant, into a bustling and thriving center for cultural, art and entertainment events. The area is set to be completely renovated with the focus on green space complemented by hotels, apartments, offices and art galleries, no doubt at a premium price that no one even near the middle class can afford.

Read more: The Power Station

For those who haven’t kept up, the arts and crafts scene has evolved. Crafts no longer means 80 year old ladies going to Michael’s (or comparable stores) to buy new crocheting patterns of the grand canyon or the American flag. Younger and younger folk are getting involved, twisting and turning traditional forms of craft-wizardry into fresh new styles and directions. Our favorite for today, the Punkey Monkey dolls from crafster Clarity Miller. Featuring heaps of punk attitude, safety pins and dyed hair, the ‘Sid & Nancy’ pair of the Punkey Monkey series is brilliant for any fashionable punk these days. The dolls are stuffed with 100% polyester and aren’t recommended for children. Well, maybe for punk children.

Read more: Punky Monkeys at Elsewares | More from Clarity Miller

“Googlespotting” or, sight-seeing via Google Earth in order to discover unique little images throughout the world via Google’s satellite maps, is a growing hobby among map surfers. With companies already taking advantage of Google Earth for marketing purposes (just look for the large Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot logos painted on the roofs of some of the newer stores), artists are beginning to find unique and interesting ways of using the system for spreading their message, or creations. Such is the case in the area of Thuringia, a small rural area in central Germany where artists recently cut a Semacode which when decoded translates to “Hello, world!”.

See more: Hello, World! Semacode for Google Earth

Brian Eno has long been a pioneer in audio and visual arts. The father of ambient music, Eno’s career spans decades and his technical and artistic achievements are rivaled by very few. Eno’s recent project, “77 Million Paintings” is an experiment in digital art, featuring 3GB or actually, 77 million paintings, on one DVD. The project is full of brilliant pieces (many millions of them) of art and a generative soundtrack produced by the man himself. The generative soundtrack, which goes along well with the “ambient-Eno” many know and love, are random sounds collected and randomly played back throughout the slideshow, making the soundtrack completely unique with every viewing. “77 Million Paintings” is available now and limited to 10,000 copies, for both PC and MAC.

Read more: 77 Million Paintings by Brian Eno | Buy 77 Million Paintings @ Insound

Ah, the Soviets, you had such style, such grace, you just couldn’t get past that whole human nature thing. The Soviet propaganda era is a brilliant time in graphic design history, with some of the starkest style in visual design and some damn nice color combinations, who needs all this digital mess we have today? Not I! To remind us of this wonderful era’s visual output, we have great sites such as The Soviet Museum of Anti-Alcohol Posters, which is a gallery-site, featuring over 30 brilliant posts from (I’d say) the early to mid-20th century.

Read more: Gallery of anti-alcohol posters from the Soviet propaganda era

I’ve always loved wind-up toys and being the spaceage bachelor that I am (ok, not really), I’ve always wanted to start a small collection of all the strange wind-up toys I’ve come across. From politician’s heads, to food, to space aliens and cartoons, the variety is crazy. Now I’ve found the Knockman Family, from designer Maywa Denki. Each character makes their own absurd movements, making some sort of ‘musical’ noise while capturing dada-esque design perfectly. Only a matter of time before some electronica artist in Japan (or Canada) is using this group to create live noise.

Read more: Musical wind-up toys by Maywa Denki

In our previous posting we saw post-WWII (1940s-1950s) Soviet propaganda poster art, now we have a mega-gallery of posters, featuing over 1200 pieces and covering the years 1917 until 1991, the hayday of Mother Russia design. Many of these works are stunning, with of course many striking tones of red used throughout. I hope many of these originals are well-preserved.

See more: Flickr gallery of Soviet propaganda art

Artist Sam Brown, also known as ExplodingDog, is quite well-known for his beautifully simple drawings chock full of personality and charm. Drawing lots of robots, dogs, hearts and humans, Brown’s artwork is used all over the internet and just about every discussion forum on the web has someone using his works in their avatars. Recently, Brown announced a very cool offer. He will draw a title, for free, for anyone mailing him a self addressed stamped envelope (don’t even think of emailing him), containing a note with the your title. The title has to be mailed in before September 30th (so you have 6 days!) and is just an experiment, as Brown says. It’s also recommended you send an envelope large enough to hold a sheet of paper, so he doesn’t have to fold it and mash it up to fit in a standard envelope.

Read more: Free drawings per mail from ExplodingDog

While musicians, writers and actors are often times referred to as artists in their respective fields, few actually make the jump into the fine arts, photography, paintings and drawings. From Frank Sinatra to Jeff Bridges to Billy Dee Williams to Donna Summer, unexpected artists are all around Hollywood, painting and drawing the visions in their head. Pop Life Art contains a comprehensive listing of celebrity artists, quite possible the most complete listing on the internet, with links to galleries where you can view and/or purchase art from your favorite celebrity.

Read more: Celebrity artists and their art

Whoa. Blacklight reactive ink seems to be gaining steam in the tattoo world, with more and more people getting light-reactive tattoos, visible only when blacklight is passed over them. The ink is FDA approved, likely being the safest ink on the market today, containing no phosphors, additives or EverGlow. Some of the tats in the gallery are pretty plain in my opinion, but the skeletal structure is a pretty great use of this ‘technology’ (go along with me here) and is most definitely Bunch of Nerds approved.

Read more: Blacklight tattoo gallery