HOW TO

Make awesome bookends from scrap materials.

MICRO

Grains of sand photographed by Gary Greenberg. Sent to me by a friend, found here.

MOSAICS

From Pompeii and Herculaneum. 

PYRITE

Pyrite -- cheerful and warm, I keep a piece on my desk and pick it up or look at it often. My friend Zenaida, who teaches classes at Paxton Gate in San Francisco, gave me the piece pictured here. Recently I went to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History where visitors are encouraged to touch the near boulder of pyrite on display, which seems to have become buffed along the top from people laying their hands on it, like some kind of healing stone. While there, an elderly woman and I chatted briefly and agreed, pyrite's got it.

LEANNE LIANG

A painter in San Francisco, Leanne Liang also takes great photographs. Thanks Leanne!

ROGER HIORNS

THIS RULES.

Roger Hiorns, a British artist up for the Turner Prize, coated a flat entirely in electric blue copper sulphate crystals. According to the Tate's website, "his exploration of chemical processes took spectacular effect in Seizure, in which a derelict flat in South London was filled with liquid copper sulphate, which after a period of time encrusted every surface of the space with blue crystals." I love me some crystals.

The project was commissioned by Artangel and is on view until January 3, 2010.

SATURDAY

PHOTO: LEANNE LIANG