Berndnaut Smilde makes clouds and rainbows from scratch.

The Dutch artist loved tinkering when he was a child, building and breaking apart endless Lego cities in efforts to make real-life objects match the mirages in his mind. In art school, he painted for a few years before he found himself drawn back into the tactile world of sculpture. One day, he wondered if he could sculpt a cloud.

To create clouds on demand, Smilde did some homework and started experimenting in his studio. First, he wetted down the floor of his studio and sprayed a fine mist of water into the air to saturate it with vapor. He then bought in a smoke machine, like the ones used to make fog at