Spanning interiors, wrapping trees and adorning facades, these big bright red doilies are somehow both conventional and ominous, somewhere between knit holiday sweaters and huge spider webs.

Created by Ashley V Blalock, this Keeping Up Appearances series was started over a half-decade ago and has made its way into various public spaces and museum galleries. They can really tie a room together, so to speak

The series is all about context and intentionally both “anachronistic and antagonistic,” explains the artist. “Although non-threatening in a domestic setting, in the gallery and at this scale, the forms overtake the viewer and loom menacingly. The doilies represent a certain desire to keep up the appearance of gentility expressed through the arrangement of objects in the domestic setting.”

She prefers “crochet, where every stitch is evidence of work by hand. Through her work, she explores themes of discomfort and the coping mechanisms used to provide solace from the stress and trauma of modern life.”

“Inherent is a compulsion to arrange and place and decorate in order to control or influence a perceived outward appearance. The red color gives away the futility of such an act and hints at the unease that exists behind every well-decorated home and lurks below the surface of an obsessive need to control and arrange.”

Using a simple material palette of thread, wood and nails, artist Gabriel Dawe‘s latest cascading color creation combines thousands of threads to make a remarkable interior rainbow.

Plexus #35 is on display at the Toledo Museum of Art (images by Andrew Weber), a featured highlight in the center of the Great Gallery illuminated against dark red walls and framed oil paintings via a skylight above.

The entire color spectrum is represented, meticulously organized strand by strand — a single twist between a pair of origin and termination lines ensures that the work appears different from every angle.

Other works by Dawe feature similar themes in different hues and shades, often intricately woven to create overlaps. By comparison, this is one of his simplest pieces yet arguably one of his most powerful.

“Originally from Mexico City, Gabriel Dawe creates site-specific installations that explore the connection between fashion and architecture, and how they relate to the human need for shelter in all its shapes and forms.”

“His work is centered in the exploration of textiles, aiming to examine the complicated construction of gender and identity in his native Mexico and attempting to subvert the notions of masculinity and machismo prevalent in the present day.”

There are many theories, but no one is quite sure where the practice of throwing shoes over raised urban infrastructure started. Some suggest bullies take shoes from other kids and toss them over power and telephone lines; other think it could be a way of marking gang or drug-dealing territories. Or perhaps people just make and lose bad bets, paying the price with sore feet.

Whatever the reason, London street artist Pejac (images by Gary Van Handley) has taken the shoe-on-a-wire concept to the next level, with individual and paired shoes seeming to hang upside-down, pulled inexplicably toward the sky. Presumably to minimize annoyance to the city (and possible damage to critical lines), the artist in this case opted to use poles rather than wires for support.

Titled Downside Up, this series of shoe art installations across East London are in part a series of street artworks but also a viral marketing campaign for an upcoming solo exhibit. Pejac is well known for both silly and thought-provoking interventions, often manipulating built environments in subtle ways by pealing paint or through small installations easily missed by less observant passersby.