Naturally Occurring Shapes and Patterns

Georgia O’Keeffe

I don’t remember exactly when I first started watching shapes, looking for patterns in the natural world. How many shapes are there? Are there essential shapes for form the world? If so, what form do they take?

Years ago, when the kids were still at home we sat behind a woman in church who hadn’t combed her hair. The cowlick in the back of her head caused her hair to swirl around a bald spot in the middle, and I realized the swirl is a constantly repeating shape. I started to look for it, and I found it–in shells, pine cones, flowers, photographs, water swirling down the tub.

One day, when my dad was sick at our house, I sprinkled cinnamon onto heating milk and rice. The cinnamon swirled into the perfect nautilus, the shape of seeds in the center of the sunflower, the shape of a storm, the galaxy, and I was comforted in the knowledge that, even though I may not understand them, I live in a world of patterns.

Shapes

I’m on vacation for the second time this year in Durango, Colorado. I’ve been here enough now to have my shopping spots, and I found this bracelet at my new consignment shop. I don’t wear much jewelry anymore, but I love to think about shapes, and I had to have this bracelet because the shell is carved into my favorite shape. The swirl, as a pattern, repeats and repeats itself all over in the place, and once I started looking for it, it seemed to be everywhere.

The swirl, the shape water makes when it goes down the drain, the shape of heating liquids, the shape of our galaxy, the shape cowlicks make in the back of your hair if you’re not a careful groomer, the shape of the helix.

Careful observation of shapes and the repeating patterns is critical to both the creation and the enjoyment of art. MC Escher was a great student of repeating shapes and the relationship between shapes, the world’s forms.

Swans 1956
The mobius strip.

Georgia O’Keeffe and Shapes, Part One

Georgia O’Keeffe included in her early memories, a family picnic that had occurred when the artist was a young toddler. O’Keeffe’s mother questioned the probability of this memory because of her daughter’s young age at the time. Yet the woman was surprised into belief when Ms. O’Keeffe described the location of the picnic and the dress her aunt wore that day.

At the first session of a class on the American painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, at Hamline University, Professor Rosalye Ultan asked the class to vote on the question: Had Georgia O’Keeffe painted erotic images into her work? I voted, No.

Blue I, 1916 Watercolor
Georgia O’Keef

Georgia-O’Keeffe-Nude, Photoi by Alfred Stieglitz

Seeing, Understanding, and More on Fall of the Rebel Angels

Vision is one of my favorite things to think about, both in the sense of seeing as well as understanding. Those two things, of course, are related to each other, and at some level, seeing and understanding are the same thing.

One time I saw an armadillo on the street where I live. Since I live in Minnesota and armadillos don’t, I honed in as I approached the animal in my car. That particular armadillo turned out to be a rusty bucket. Learning and judgement are essential aspects of vision, as well as the shapes and colors we physically see. My state of mind effects what I see, recognize, and remember. I am inclined to expect the likely and evaluate the unlikely.

The Twentieth Century Catholic priest and spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, died en route to The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. He wanted another chance to see his favorite painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen was surprised and pleased by what he discovered in Rembrandt’s portrayal of God in the figure of the father in that painting.The Dutch artist, M. C. Escher’s work was powerfully influenced by the intricate Moorish tile work he saw at The Alhambra in Granada, Spain.

Someone I know in Minnesota also traveled to Spain, specifically to see his favorite painting, Heironymus Bosch’s, The Garden of Earthly Delights. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights_by_Bosch_High_Resolution_2.jpg. Similarities exist between that painting and Bruegel’s Fall of the Rebel Angels.

Last year someone asked me if I had considered why I keep making art pilgrimages, and I have been thinking about that question since then. The answer is connected to the reason I continue to like Pieter Bruegel’s painting. The answer is also connected to why I like to think about seeing and the art of understanding. Artists have always recorded both the accepted and alternate personal and world views. Isn’t that intriguing? Isn’t that worth considering?

Detail from Buegel’s, Fall of the Rebel Angels