Canvas Spirals

---

The spirals or rolls I've made with strips of canvas started a number of years ago as a meditative task. While making one I like to think of it as embedded or rolled up thoughts. Most people want to touch them immediately. They are tactile, soft and inviting. I enjoy their simplicity and the blending of painting with sculptural elements and craft. They evoke the phenomenon and imagery of crop circles while also resembling cylindrical bails of wheat you often see when driving through farm country.

I've always been drawn to the form of a spiral. They are fascinating. I think it is because they are such a complex yet inherent shape found in nature. I never will forget my painting professor Al Bright discussing the "Golden Mean" and explaining the Fibonacci sequence to a bewildered classroom. I knew the basics but to hear him elocute in such a manner was captivating. It has always stuck with me and informed my artwork especially using the rule of thirds in composition. I also like the spiral because it represents an infinitude in ways - always careening inward and always ever expanding toward infinity. It is a shape found in atomic structure, to sea shells and plants, to planetary orbits and galaxies. Nature love the spiral. Spiral out. 

If you want to see something really cool concerning spirals, check out this video model of how our solar system orbits the Milky Way's galactic center. 

The band Tool also has also expressed a bit of an affinity for spirals in their music. Check it out.

Update (3.31.2020): Just came across a cool article on phys.org about spirals and the spiral wave patterns observed during cellular division across the surface of starfish eggs. Neat stuff.