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A quick jaunt to New York City this weekend brought me to the Brooklyn Bridge to check out the city's latest public art project, the "New York City Waterfalls" by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The piece features four waterfalls suspended only by steel scaffolding and a system of pumps, which suck up water from the East River and send it tumbling down from heights of 90 to 120 feet, almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty. The falls put a little piece of upstate in Manhattan and, according to Eliasson, are intended to get New Yorkers to slow down and notice things around them, natural or otherwise. "I am not trying to bring nature to the city," Eliasson told the New Yorker. "It's a kind of counter-numbness project."

The project, funded by the Public Art Fund and the City of New York, is quite green. Its electricity is 100 percent offset by renewable energy sources, it uses energy-saving LED lights, and it has special filters in place to ensure that fish and river life can't get caught in the pumps.

Need graphic design for your website or a new logo for your company? Maybe your business has other artistic needs, but you don't want to shell out the money to contract an artist. A new website, crowdSPRING, may be your answer. It applies the Web 2.0 treatment to commercial graphic design.

As the buyer of art, you create a profile on the website about the kind of project you want and how much you're willing to pay. Then artists, who also have profiles on the site, will submit their best cracks at your project (actual work, not proposals), and you can choose the one you like and "award" the designer the money you said you'd pay. Payment is held in escrow by crowdSPRING until the deal is done. Here's how the site describes the process:

Tattoos are fast becoming a mark of the 21st century, with one quarter or more of those under the age of 30 adorning their skin with at least one. Whether driven by the urge for personal expression or just plain youthful impulsiveness, most people get tattooed without a clue about the health implications of this invasive skin-puncturing procedure. I'd suggest that all tattooing require a signed consent form outlining risks—the most obvious one being a major case of remorse.

Not long ago, I wrote about a man who wanted to destroy his gas guzzler for the environment, soliciting advice on whether he should blow it up, crush it to pieces, or convert it to a hybrid. Unfortunately, Ryan Mickle's devotees are all still waiting with bated breath, as he has not updated his website since August 1. Last weekend, two Washington, D.C., artists beat him in his quest.

The YAY Team, a performance art group presented by the local Meat Market Gallery, sent out the vague invitation: "Please join the YAY Team in saying goodbye to a personal era of waste, materialism and ignorance. In 'Black Out: Retiring a Cloud of Guilt,' they will renew their commitment to healthy living and a healthy future as they remove what would have been a negative impact on all our lives for years to come." The location of the performance was a small parking lot in a gallery-heavy part of Washington, and a crowd started to gather 10 minutes before the show.

So you've tried to get into the hipster knitting trend, but your fingers are just too clumsy for knit one, purl two. Why not give pottery a try? While the classic craft isn't as portable as knitting (you can't spin pottery while on the commuter train to work), it does offer some of the same satisfaction of working with your hands.