Christopher Stearns

Philippa Radon "Paint is the quickest and most inexpensive way to change an environment-and you don't have to have a law degree to paint a room." surfaces: Walls, ceilings, floors, doors, cabinets-"anything that wears a coat of paint." inspirations: "The earth and all living things. The color combinations one finds in minerals and rocks are intense and vital. When I dig them up it's like opening a jewel box under the earth."

Philippa Radon "Paint is the quickest and most inexpensive way to change an environment-and you don't have to have a law degree to paint a room." surfaces: Walls, ceilings, floors, doors, cabinets-"anything that wears a coat of paint." inspirations: "The earth and all living things. The color combinations one finds in minerals and rocks are intense and vital. When I dig them up it's like opening a jewel box under the earth."

To hear Max Wong talk, one would think she is describing some fabulous possession in her 1924 bungalow in Silver Lake. "Every day I look at it when I come home. It's like a piece of art to me. I don't get tired of it." Her art is not hanging on a wall, decorating a shelf or even standing on the floor. It is the floor. Linoleum, no less. Wong's kitchen floor is covered with black linoleum with an inlaid red border and bamboo motif detailed right down to life-size dragonflies.

'We live in an artistic outpost in the middle of a commercial district. It's humming, buzzing and chugging with industry.' Norman Lloyd//44/sculptor and toy prototype specialist Gabor Kalman/66/filmmaker/professor > vital stats: 3,000-square-foot loft is above Cirrus Gallery, a former furniture warehouse. > previous digs: 1925 Tudor apartment in West Hollywood. > on loft living: "We love the 18-foot ceilings, old brick walls and windows on three sides with views of the L.A. skyline."--N.L.

When Clint Eastwood romanced Meryl Streep in "The Bridges of Madison County," he swept her right off her linoleum floor. That's because the film's set designer knew that the smooth, washable floor covering, being used extensively in battleships and factories, was also ubiquitous in home kitchens and bathrooms of the time. First produced in England in the middle of the last century, linoleum is the latest in a line of retro materials to be rediscovered and fashioned anew.