Crystallography
Acrylic, watercolor, transfer print, pen on watercolor paper. Poplar frame. 14.5 x 20.5”
Not long ago, I purchased a vintage two book set about Crystallography from a thrift store. The book was full of beautiful and incomprehensible (to me) illustrations like this one.
Crystallography is the science of crystalline solids and the structure of crystals—the arrangement of atoms and geometric lattices.
In everyday life, our phones and complicated digital devices can be so small and so useful due to our understanding of crystallography.
This is not to be confused with the idea of crystals as a spiritual tool for protection, growth, or intention setting. Although, if you really think about it, we can use our phone and its tiny crystals to aid in all the above.
And to be fair, if you were to take your iPhone to the past and show it to some ancient person, it would appear like wizardry. And if they asked you how it works, 99% of us couldn’t explain it any better than trying to explain magic. And if you do happen to be a crystal scientist in a situation where an ancient person thinks your android phone is magic, don’t worry, you can always just tell them it runs on crystals.