With its massive size, shocking blue color and tragic backstory, Luis Jiménez’s “Mustang” has generated much discussion since its installation at the Denver International Airport in February. The 32-foot-high work has been long awaited in Denver, first commissioned in 1993 as part of the airport’s public art program. Sadly, a portion of the sculpture fell and crushed the artist in 2006, delaying its completion. After his death, Jiménez’s family supervised the final work on the project.

The National Endowment for the Arts has selected 11 artists to receive 2008 National Heritage Fellowships. The $20,000 awards are given to those working in folk and traditional arts, both as visual and performing artists.

After nine decades of ownership, Corning Inc. has decided to sell Steuben Glass, its handmade luxury crystal division.

A buyer has not yet stepped forward, but the company says it hopes to find a new owner before the end of the year, and will consider other options,including closing the business, if one does not emerge.

You may know Karen Allen best as Marion Ravenwood, Indiana Jones’s fiery sidekick in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

What you might not know is that the actress is a life-long knitter. “Even when I was doing films, I’d set up a little design studio in my trailer,” she says. “This was my first love.” It’s no wonder that the down-to-earth star launched her own business in 2003 and now runs her own shop, Karen Allen Fiber Arts, in Great Barrington, Mass.

Over mussels and white wine, with classic rock playing in the background at a restaurant called The Ravenous Pig, John Petrey speaks about his art, the golden years of television and the cultural icons of the 1960s. The artist’s current series is a collection of nostalgic dresses made from unconventional materials: bodices cut from handmade paper or patina-coated copper, and skirts constructed of old barn wood, asphalt shingles or busted yardsticks. Some hang in relief, as though dancing across the wall, while others stand upright, perched like a dressmaker’s form.

Certainly not everyone has a foot fetish—the reactions to Sam Bakewell’s work range from introspection to horror. The young Welsh artist casts body parts in porcelain, which he over-fires to achieve polished, sometimes softened, forms. Toes curl to suggest “intimacy, ecstasy or agony.”

As summer winds down, daylight grows shorter and life begins to slip into a quieter, more buttoned-down season—except in the arts. In that arena, museum schedules are tantalizingly packed with special exhibitions as the fall-winter season kicks in. Fortunately for museum-goers, a lot of them will also open in new and renovated spaces.

David and Jacqueline Charak’s collection of contemporary sculpture—teapots, for the most part— crowds the corners of their St. Louis, Mo., home like a bunch of eccentric relatives.

A mischievous boy with a pumpkin-shaped head under a baseball cap makes off with a bird in a work by Leslie Rosdol. On a high shelf in the den, Kate Anderson evokes Jasper John’s flag paintings in knotted waxed linen over a squarish pot with a silver paintbrush handle. A Scott Schoenherr monkey—his tail is the handle—holds a squawking rooster that forms the spout. Whimsical so far, but clearly teapots.

Seated at his worktable, eyes shielded by blue-tinted glasses, Paul Stankard is creating an illusion. In one hand, he holds a rod of clear glass; in the other, a dark one. Between them, fire shoots out of a gas-fueled torch, softening the glass. With smooth, steady gestures, Stankard layers clear glass onto the dark, then pulls. The rod stretches. Again, he coats and pulls until the dark glass is but a filament inside a clear rod that he can shape into minute petals, stamens, root filaments or the edge of a damselfly wing. Once Stankard has assembled countless components into a color-rich bouquet, he encases it in crystal. The clear glass enrobing the dark filaments “disappears,” leaving wisps of color so fragile it is impossible to fathom how Stankard could have manipulated them.

How many artists do you think there are in the United States? Would it surprise you if I said nearly 2 million? That’s only half the number of professional U.S. athletes (4 million) but twice the number of lawyers (1 million). And according to a study of census data released in June by the National Endowment for the Arts, artists are one of the largest classes of workers in the nation, only slightly smaller than the U.S. military’s active duty and reserve personnel (2.2 million).