The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan was one of the most devastating environmental events of our time, with its overall impact rippling across the globe for years to come. But just as stated in Newton’s third law—for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction—so too did the people of Japan respond to the magnitude of the destruction in an effort to rebuild their country anew as captured in this staggering new artwork by Manabu Ikeda titled Rebirth. Starting in July of 2013, Ikeda toiled away on the 13 x 10 foot piece for 10 hours a day inside a basement studio at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin. He finished work just last week.

At its core, Rebirth depicts a tree rising from the debris of the tsunami as enormous waves crash nearby, but a closer inspection reveals thousands of tiny details, the individual stories of anonymous people, plants, and animals as they fight for survival and try to return their world to a semblance of order. Ikeda says that in his work he seeks to replicate the beautiful chaos of life that rarely fits a simple linear narrative. Instead, everything crashes together and interacts in unknown and unexpected ways, an idea that applies directly to his process as he often doesn’t know what each day will bring as he works inch by inch on the near endless canvas before him.

While Ikeda sketches broad details in pencil on the canvas beforehand, he primarily works with pen and acrylic ink using various forms of cross-hatching and brushwork to fill areas so dense with details, the true nature of the artwork isn’t revealed until staring at it from only a few inches away. Mountains of vehicles, gnarled tree branches, and train tracks sit tangled at the base of a tree, and flower blooms comprised of umbrellas and emergency tents fill the sky above. Everywhere a collision of humankind and nature, for better or worse.

“My goal is to faithfully express my view of the world in my composition, but I don’t intentionally depict detailed images,” he tells the Chazen. “Because I see details when I observe things, rather than the whole, I find pen and ink to be the best tools to express how I see them.”














vimeo.com/192649900

It's been less than a month since President-elect Donald Trump's victory, and everywhere you look, people are struggling to organize.

You can see a lot of it happening on our favorite social platforms. On Facebook, it comes in the form of repetitive pleas to "Call your legislator!" On Twitter, people retweet every 140-character nugget of pseudo-profundity they can find.

It can be confusing to know what to do when so much of our democracy is at stake, but a few new sites and apps (and even a couple of old ones) can help activists and concerned Americans pave a manageable path forward.

Below, we've compiled a list of digital tools that make it easier for those who want to organize, but need specific solutions, coordinated guidance and helpful information at their fingertips.

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I was born into a prominent white nationalist family — David Duke is my godfather, and my dad started Stormfront, the first major white nationalist website — and I was once considered the bright future of the movement.

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It surprises me now how often Mr. Trump and my 19-year-old self would have agreed on our platforms: tariffs to bring back factory jobs, increased policing of black communities, deporting illegal workers and the belief that American culture was threatened. I looked at my white friends and family who felt dispossessed, at the untapped political support for anyone — even a kid like me — who wasn’t afraid to talk about threats to our people from outsiders, and I knew not only that white nationalism was right, but that it could win.

Several years ago, I began attending a liberal college where my presence prompted huge controversy. Through many talks with devoted and diverse people there — people who chose to invite me into their dorms and conversations rather than ostracize me — I began to realize the damage I had done. Ever since, I have been trying to make up for it.

For a while after I left the white nationalist movement, I thought my upbringing made me exaggerate the likelihood of a larger political reaction to demographic change. Then Mr. Trump gave his Mexican “rapists” speech and I spent the rest of the election wondering how much my movement had set the stage for his. Now I see the anger I was raised with rocking the nation.

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Much has been made of the incoherence of Mr. Trump’s proposals, but what really matters is who does — and doesn’t — need to fear them. None of the ideas that Mr. Trump has put forward would endanger me, and I once enthusiastically advocated for most of what he says. No proposal to put more cops in black neighborhoods to stop and frisk residents would cause me to be harassed. A ban on Muslim immigration doesn’t implicate all people who look like me in terrorism. Overturning Roe v. Wade will not force me to make a dangerous choice about my health, nor will a man who personifies sexual assault without penalty make me any less safe. When the most powerful demographic in the United States came together to assert that making America great again meant asserting their supremacy, they were asserting my supremacy.

The wave of violence and vile language that has risen since the election is only one immediate piece of evidence that this campaign’s reckless assertion of white identity comes at a huge cost. More and more people are being forced to recognize now what I learned early: Our country is susceptible to some of our worst instincts when the message is packaged correctly.

South Korea's protests against President Park Geun-hye continue to gather steam.

This is the fifth straight weekend that the protests calling for Park's resignation have taken place, and the numbers keep climbing. Organisers in Seoul said 1.5 million people came, while authorities said it was more like 270,000.

But for a country of just 50 million people, even several hundred people showing up is absolutely mind-blowing.

Third party monitors have pegged the attendance closer to the 1 million mark than the low-hundred-thousands, as police said.

Protesters are demanding Park step down amid a corruption scandal. She's being accused of allowing longtime-friend Choi Soon-sil to manipulate power, and extort millions from companies.

The Detroit Free Press spent a year listening to Detroit’s children, trying to understand their experiences — as many face violence, trauma and instability. With help from a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network, we looked both in our own backyard and around the country for solutions that may help children deal with the "toxic stresses" in their lives. Catch up with the series here.​ Here is how we did the project.

If you could change one thing about Detroit, what would it be?

“It’s a lot of shooting. They took my mommy’s car. I want the city to be safer.” - MarKeyta Meadows, 5

"I want better playgrounds for kids and to be safer. I don’t like when the bad people shoot at my house." - Nejaiah Cross, 7

"I would like to have my school to be better and learn more." - Dillan Sims, 7

"It would be the perspective that others have about the city, because it isn't always good. And I just wish others would see the beauty in my city like I do." - Le’Elle Davis, 16

"It would be the rest of the world's perspectives affecting the youths' minds and goals. ... Everything starts with the mind, and if these children feel that they can't reach the sky... then that's affecting them before the rest of the world's words can even get to them." - Amyre Brandom, 17

"It would be our educational system because there's so much potential in the youth of Detroit. However, we just do not have the tools to facilitate everyone's dream." - Charles English, 17

"It would be that everyone listens to one another. Once we listen to each other, we will understand each other's perspective. We will understand where everyone comes from. We will relate to one another." - Chance Carson, 17