Today I am not feeling so well, so I went to my photo folder with the desire to find a photo that would calm my stomach. Yes, I meant that, calm my stomach. Looking at images of beer from Oktoberfest just wasn’t going to work this morning. And I found this one, of a sculpture in Barcelona. Just lines and light and sky.
Guess what? I feel better already.
Spirals are a beautiful shape. They have marvelous curves and convey energy and motion. Not only that, they are a truly efficient form used in nature, and we see them so many places in our every day lives!
While I have captured spirals with my camera countless times, the first place I truly became aware of the spiral form explicitly was in the Barcelona Science Museum. The exhibit on forms found in nature had this to say:
The spiral is a circumference that twists away on the plane that contains it. It is the best way of growing without occupying too much space. It is frequently found in animals when there exists the contradictory need for something massive, voluminous, broad or long that does not affect mobility (horns, tails, tongues, trunks, shells, etc.) and in plants to grow something that will subsequently be unrolled. If we unrolled all the spirals we have at home (kitchen and toilet paper, audio and video tapes, adhesive tape, records, springs….) we would be forced to leave the house, as we would not all fit.
Wow! I had never thought of it that way. The typical form in nature that comes to mind for me is the shell (above, from Barcelona Science Museum), but there are so many other places you will see it. Take this photo of a gardenia, for example, from my online friend Barbara:
So gorgeous! Mother nature really knows what she is doing in these things (and so does Barbara). 🙂
Our man-made world copies nature to use the function of spirals. I don’t personally have any photos of toilet paper, but the common spiral staircase, like this one in Verona, is a good example.
And I will spare you the countless spiral staircase photos I have of lighthouses on the Oregon coast! I can’t step into one without capturing the wonderful curves and lines of them. (In prepping for this post I learned that technically, this is not a spiral because it is not all on the same plane – it’s a helix. But you’ll forgive me if I claim artistic license here, won’t you?)
Even more than function, humans copy the form of spirals in our everyday world. The Romans used them, as I discovered in this floor mosaic in the British Museum:
The Greeks used them, in their ionic columns. (Thanks to my 9-year-old son, I’ve relearned which are Doric, Ionic and Corinthian. Ionic have the spirals.) These columns are used all over in architecture, here’s just one example I caught in Bath:
And they are used all the time in wrought iron work, as I’ve noticed here in my travels in Europe. Here’s a light post in Bath:
My favorite wrought iron spiral of all time is this railing in Amsterdam. Talk about function following form! What graceful curves…
An architect who used spirals over and over in his work was Antoni GaudÃ, in Barcelona. He took much of his inspiration from nature, and this ceiling detail is but one example.
We see spirals every day, even if you haven’t noticed it lately. I captured these two images of bus shelter advertisements in different cities on our recent trip to England. Spirals are used in graphic arts to denote natural beauty and to convey energy. They catch your eye and draw you in.
Keep your eye out for spirals around you. Here are a few ideas:
1. Look at home. All of those rolls of paper! And then there are spiral notebooks, springs, even toys (hello, Slinky!). What is there with spirals, sitting right next to you?
2. Look at nature. Flowers, ferns, vines, shells all show spirals. Water moves in spirals, think whirlpools and breaking waves. How can you capture them? What else can you find?
3. Look at architecture. Staircases and wrought iron are two I’ve mentioned, what others do you see?
4. Look at art and design. Artist have used spirals in their work for thousands of years, and the golden spiral or golden ratio is a fundamental compositional principle (see a short and helpful explanation here). What traditional and modern uses of spirals can you find?
I can’t wait to see your spirals! Join in and share them in the Flickr group.
PS – If you want to do more exploring with your camera, visit past posts here.
A stairway is a means to an end, a way to get from one level to another. But sometimes, the “means” can be separated from the “end.” It becomes important in itself, like this stairway in the attic of Casa Battlo in Barcelona. Yes, it’s a stairway. That’s the obvious and practical “end.” But it is a beautiful work of art, nicely framed and ready to be enjoyed, in it’s own right. The “means” develops an identity on its own, a purpose of its own, without considering the intended “end.”
I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of creating art, creating my photography. The process of creating – of noticing and seeing and capturing and playing – is as important as the end result. The photo that I present here each day is just the obvious and practical end of my art, like the purpose of a stairway to get you from one level to the next. But the fact is that the process, the means, is probably more important to me, the creator. That’s why I continue to create, why all artists continue to create. If it wasn’t, we’d all be done with the first work of art we are really happy with, especially if we aren’t doing this for a living. (Getting paid for art is another kind of wonderful “end” for the artistic process.)
Ursula K. LeGuin said, “It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
The journey, for me, is the creation of the photograph. The beauty of this “means” being it’s own “end” is that process of creating is not finite, is an ongoing, never-ending, renewable resource. Infinite. Regardless of what I created or shared yesterday, I have more to create today and tomorrow.
Isn’t that an incredibly positive and exciting way to think about it? I encourage you to think of your art, whether it’s photography or writing or cooking or yoga, in the same way. The end is not the purpose of the creative process, the means is!
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin
I read this quote in three different, unrelated places in one 24-hour period a couple of days ago. On a blog I follow, in an online class I’m taking and in a book I’m reading. When something like that happens, you can’t ignore it. There is a message for me here… it’s time to bloom!
A wrought iron handrail in La Pedrera, aka Casa Mila, another building by Antonio Gaudi in Barcelona is a great example of soft edges. The handrail could be all straight lines, right angles, functional, forgettable. But it’s not, it’s art – part of the decoration, the feel of the place. It’s beautiful. I never thought much on wrought iron before living here in Europe, but now I’ve seen so much beautiful and functional wrought iron work I respect it as it’s own art form.
In another forum, I had someone comment on the contrast I was seeing in my Barcelona photos. She put it as hard vs. soft edges. I hadn’t even noticed that before, the contrast that I had noticed in Barcelona was the old vs. new, modern vs. classic, but there is definitely the hard and soft contrast too. Straight lines and flowing curves. I love getting a comment like that, that helps me to see things I captured in a different way. Keep them coming!
The attic of Casa Battlo, one of Antonio Gaudi’s houses, is a magic place. All arches and light. Gaudi was an amazing architect of the Modernista age in Barcelona, he was able to create such a wonderful feel in the spaces he designed, even in something as mundane as an attic where only the servants would go. He was an artist, and his canvas was the buildings and spaces he created.
The feeling of light, design, art inside Gaudi’s Casa Battlo was reminiscent for me of visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s Gordon House in Oregon. It’s like you enter the space of genius. These places make me look at architecture differently, not just from the outside but from the inside too. And then I wonder why most of our buildings are boxes with holes in them for light, when we could have spaces like these.