April may be the cru­elest month, mix­ing mem­o­ry and desire, etc. But Mr. Eliot nev­er depend­ed on sea­son­al change for his liveli­hood, except per­haps in the vaguest metaphor­i­cal sense. For a more uplift­ing take on spring, here’s The Wind­mill Farmer, a charm­ing short film by one of our favorite young ani­ma­tors.

Joaquin Bald­win, 27, earned his MFA at The UCLA Ani­ma­tion Work­shop. He was born in Paraguay to an envi­ron­men­tal activist moth­er and an artist father, and you can see the influ­ence of both voca­tions in his shorts, which have already won over 100 awards, and often have an envi­ron­men­tal theme. For more infor­ma­tion about his work and back­ground, check out our edi­tor’s 2010 write-up over at Brain­pick­ings. And enjoy those lilacs while they last.

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.

Ter­lin­gua was once a min­ing vil­lage in Texas. Now, it’s an old ghost town where Scott Mar­tin and Lance Keimig host The Full Moon Night Pho­tog­ra­phy Work­shop, a field sem­i­nar that teach­es pho­tog­ra­phers to “see” in the dark. Need­less to say, there is an entire­ly dif­fer­ent art to cap­tur­ing images at night, a bun­dle of dif­fer­ent tech­niques and approach­es to mas­ter, includ­ing know­ing how to paint the dark­ness with light. This video runs 6:30 and gets par­tic­u­lar­ly good around the 2:50 mark…

via @MatthiasRascher

Since 1990, Dutch artist Theo Jansen has giv­en life to Strand­beests. They’re made of noth­ing more than a mass of yel­low plas­tic tubes. But these kinet­ic sculp­tures feed off of the wind. They roam the beach­es on their own. And they evolve. Soon enough, Jansen says, you will see Strand­beests liv­ing in herds, and who knows what the alche­my of art and engi­neer­ing will bring next.

This clip comes from a BBC pro­duc­tion, Nature Knows Best, that aired late last year. You can also catch Jansen intro­duc­ing his self-pro­pelling beach ani­mals at TED.

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