On a Sunday afternoon in 2010, the Oakland-based cartoonist Daniel Clowes wanted to watch a movie. But not just any movie. "I began thinking, 'I wish there were more of those that I could rent,'" he said. "'I guess I'll do my own.'" Five years later, Clowes emerged from his home studio with Patience.

Glynn Washington thinks America is suffering from an empathy gap. "We can't imagine anymore what it's like to be someone else," said the host and executive producer of the popular NPR radio show Snap Judgment. "And unless we're able to do that, unless we're able to understand someone else's story, I think we're lost."

In a closet-sized darkroom in the back of Photobooth , a tintype portrait studio in San Francisco’s Mission District, Michael Shindler carefully holds a shiny 3-by-5–inch black aluminum plate on the fingertips of one hand. Glass bottles containing yellow- and amber-colored collodion — a mixture of liquid nitrocellulose, ether, and alcohol — are clustered on the countertop.

“Watch your step,” Nick Saraceni tells me right before he stops and looks at the bottom of his black Nikes. The 24-year-old graffiti hunter and I are standing along the side of a brick warehouse in an industrial part of Berkeley, California. Below our feet lies an uneven pile of plastic sheeting, loose wooden planks, and, as Saraceni has discovered, nails.

Hall Newbegin, the founder of the natural fragrance company Juniper Ridge, is in the middle of leading a 15-person group of employees and guests on a wild harvesting hike through the Sierra Madre Mountains just north of Ojai when he stops to pick up a piece of dry cougar scat. He lifts it to his nose and inhales deeply.

Located in a squat wood-paneled building, streaked white and gray with age, Audium stands in sharp contrast to its showy Victorian neighbors and the fortresslike church that anchors this San Francisco block. No neon sign lights up the entrance. No windows offer a peek inside. Only the soft glow of a single bulb shines on the steps between the gate and the door.

From renaissance landscape painters to site-specific sculptors like Andy Goldsworthy, artists have long mined the natural world for creative fuel. But scenic inspiration isn't limited to the masters. Travelers of any talent level can gain a richer sense of place with these art classes offered in memorable locales.

When you’re on the road, your phone can feel like your closest companion. Load it with a crew of travel apps, and that connection becomes even more rewarding. There’s an app for just about every step of a trip, from helping you decide what to pack to finding a room at the last minute. “The biggest trend in travel apps is toward intelligent travel assistants,” says Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting Inc., which specializes in how emerging technologies impact the global travel industry.

Kulapat Yantrasast, founding partner and creative director at the L.A. -based design firm wHY, believes museum architects should act like matchmakers. “You set the atmosphere so that both [the art and people] will be comfortable ... and then you leave the room,” he says. Yantrasast, who describes his design philosophy as “very human,” has been creating inviting, sunlit places for people and art to mingle for close to 20 years now.

In 2007, Lisa Costa moved across the country for a harvest internship at a renowned producer of single vineyard pinot noirs in the Russian River Valley. She had fallen in love with winemaking in her early twenties while working at small farm wineries in New York's Hudson Valley. The internship promised a chance to work with some of the most expensive fruit being grown in the United States.

To say Mows (or @Mows510, as he's known on Instagram) doesn't look like a stereotypical "vandal" would be an understatement. On the night we met, the 54-year-old tech worker was dressed in light blue jeans and sensible brown walking shoes; glasses hung from the neck of his beige fleece. Despite his decidedly Dad vibe, the father of three has created sixty illegal, albeit adorable, street installations on walls and telephone poles in Alameda and Oakland.

Even as broke college students, Cynthia Penner and Jay Brooks, the married principals behind Vancouver-based Box Interior Design , shared a love for lush environments. Today, the couple builds intimate, nuanced spaces that evoke their clients’ unique personalities—not just the latest trends. From the elegant, minimal look they created for the Vancouver restaurant Market by Jean Georges to the shiny glamour of their designs for Glowbal Restaurant Group , the self-described “sensual modernists” aim to affect people at an emotional level.

For the second year in a row, Toronto’s Winter Stations design competition and exhibition will attempt to lure Canadians out of hibernation and back to the beach this February. Founded by RAW Design, Ferris + Associates, and Curio, the competition’s four winning teams and three student teams were selected from a pool of 380 submissions to transform seven lifeguard towers along Lake Ontario into immersive art installations.

When my mom took me shopping for my first bra, I was terrified that a classmate might see me. I kept my head low as she guided me through the dense jungle of satin straps and cups, and I nearly died of humiliation when she asked where the training bras were located. Nearly 20 years later, in July 2006, Mom and I are again standing in front of a cashier island in the middle of the sea of lingerie at the San Jose Nordstrom.

I am not what you would call a risk taker. I cringe when I see someone bicycling without a helmet. I wait an hour before swimming after I eat. I've visited ski resorts in Colorado, Germany, and Switzerland, but I've never hit the slopes. I prefer to trudge safely along flat surfaces in snowshoes instead.

On a warm spring day, I followed local graffiti photographer and urban explorer Michael (whom the Express agreed to not fully identify) across a green stretch of park lawn. We passed kids playing in the grass and a couple lounging on beach blankets, their heads almost touching as they talked. The weather was perfect for lazily soaking up the sun, but Michael's walk was straight and determined, and I had to jog every few steps to keep up with my six-foot-four guide.