Creative Inspirations

I am fascinated by the intersection of mathematical concepts with the organic world, spiritual symbolism, and the resulting application to design and artistic expression. The following are a growing series of articles I am writing on the topic, with illustrations from my own artistic explorations and lists of interesting links for further reading.

The Mobius strip, at its simplest, may be modelled by taking a flat strip of paper and giving it a half twist before joining the ends.  The resulting structure has many intriguing properties, most notably the fact that it has only one surface and one edge.   A variety of fascinating hollow structures may be generated from the notion of a non-orientable surface, and metal crochet offers a versatile construction method. 

The properties of the mobius and its derived structures make it a natural symbol for the unity of all things and the illusory nature of duality.  It has also been used to represent concepts such as rebirth, and the cycles of continuous change and renewal in the natural world.

I was intrigued by the idea of combining a symbol of One-ness with a form that is intrinsically sheltering and nurturing.

More.....

Though easily modelled in crochet and knitting as a steadily increasing ruffle, hyperbolic space was a radical discovery that challenged the old Euclidean notions of linearity.  In hyperbolic space, multiple "straight" lines may pass through a given point without intersecting, a feat not possible in Euclidean geometry and with fascinating implications for the understanding of the structure of our universe.

In biology, examples of hyperbolic planes abound, including ruffled lettuces and, in the ocean reef environment, sea slugs, nudibranches and flatworms.  This pattern of growth is a very efficient way to create maximal surface area in a limited space.

Further reading on hyperbolic space:

From the Institute for Figuring: a very readable introduction to the subject, with lots of illustrations and interesting links:   http://theiff.org/oexhibits/oe1.html  Particularly intriguing is their gallery of crochet models, especially the coral reef project.

More...

Part I

Colour seems to be a topic of both great satisfaction and (at times) great consternation among those of us who create with it: intense delight in a beautiful colourway, intense frustration and needless insecurity in attempting to create that pleasure from scratch. 

Much like food and music, the experience of colour is heavily influenced by cultural conditioning and emotional associations, therefore I don't believe that "rules" can adequately govern such a subjective experience, nor are there Right or Wrong combinations.  I really believe the search for a winning colour "formula" is futile - worse than that, it circumvents a rich world of exploration and mindful seeing.

PhotoFiltre is a freeware photoeditor (no business association whatsoever - it works, it's available to everyone, the price was right when I needed it.)  The functions and tools I use are very basic, and I'm quite sure are available in most commercial photoediting programs.

To start: a seemingly simple phenomenon: a clear blue summer sky.

Here's where it gets fun.  Go to the vertical menu, select the dropper and suck up a colour from your photo.  Open a fresh page (blank page, far left on the horizontal menu), go to filtre -> other -> grid generator and create your blank palette.  Back to the vertical menu, select the bucket and fill in a square with the colour you just selected.  Carry on sampling shades from different parts of your photo and dropping them in your palette.

What you do with that palette is a topic for another day, but the simple act of creating it will cause you to take a closer look at "common" things.

Some of the loveliest surprises come from subjects normally considered to have lost their beauty, such as these November leaves, long since discarded by their branches and rendered brown and sodden by a week of rain.

Read the full article.....

The one consistent feature of successful colour schemes is balance. They may be high intensity, or soothingly quiet - but in their own way, for their own purposes, they are balanced. I suspect it is this phenonemon that leads to the proliferation of dogmatic colour rules: "It will Never Work Unless you include a bit of something complementary / light / dark / warm / saturated etc." Within a particular personal colour esthetic, such a rule may give consistently satisfying results, but it can also be limiting. Balance is as complex and subtle as the colours themselves, and I find it most useful to understand the underlying attributes of a colourway and play with the parameters until something clicks. Equally enlightening is the practice of collecting and analyzing existing instances of pleasurable colour, especially from the natural world. The whole process is about training the eye and the intuition to see deeply, and be open to new possibilities.

This will be a rather theory-heavy installment, but I felt it would be sensible to give a very basic introduction to some of the concepts that form a basis for experimentation and play. This is by no means a comprehensive treatise on colour, and there are excellent books out there that expound on the subject in great detail, my favorite being Deb Menz's "Colorworks".

Read the full article......

Living in the incomparable beauty of the coast mountains, I never go anywhere without camera in hand. I love to study the subtlety of colours in the natural world, and this archive represents a growing collection of palettes drawn from my own photographs of natural objects and phenomena.

The full archive may be viewed here.