In the Spiral Abyss

Spirals are a fascinating shape that is packed with meaning and have intrigued humanity for millennia. Life is always spiraling in or spiraling out. We are always in the process of working our way to the center of the spiral or creating from the center outward.

Spirals are happening all around us. The perfect example of the outward spiral is the nautilus. After it is hatched it grows faze by faze and moves into a new section of the shell. As it grows the compartments get bigger and bigger creating one of the most beautiful and harmonious shells in the world. Its past or history is marked by a perfect spiral the whole life captured in an iridescent shell with small compartments, each segments being a developmental period.

“Personally I relate very literally to the developmental picture of the spiral. I can spend months or years focusing on a particular material or technique.”

I spent years making jewelry out of titanium, but currently it does not excite or interest me in the way that it did. From that time I learned special techniques about working with such a hard metal. There is a way approaching a piece of art in titanium that requires thinking and pre planning that is unlike the traditional metals. This period helped me refine my skills and understanding of hard lessons that needed to be learned and a set of skills that I need to create the work that I do.

The in Spiral

Spiraling in is the wonderful experience of working you way into something that you don’t yet understand.

• It is the journey of questioning

• Trying any random thought that comes into your head

• sleepless nights redesigning all the components in your mind

• doing everything in your power to somehow get to an understanding or experience that you know must be there.

This of course might be simpler for someone with a concrete and clear goal, but for an artist it is tangible way of feeling into the unknown to answer a primal desire that is burning below the surface and needs to be expressed to be understood.

The journey to this expression is the spiraling in, it is the ability to move toward a goal knowing that that path is not straight. Spiraling in is torture, because you are leaving behind or missing countless other experiences and possibilities and the holy realization of feeling at one with the world through focusing so deeply on one articular aspect.

I am at home on the in spiral and love the journey into the unknown in order to find the expression of a particular idea. I can spend years developing a particular piece of jewelry in my mind. What started as something simple turns into something that could take months to create. The opposite can also happen, my wild idea could become so much simpler through iteration.

The out spiral

"No journey inward is worth anything unless the fruits of the endeavor are shared. Ten perfect mental pieces of jewelry do not hang from necks or adorn fingers giving the wearers pride and reminding them of important goals. Those special pieces made in metal and gems do just that, they are a reminder of significant life moments and goals that we have."

In the beginning I would get a little depressed when I would finish a piece of jewelry. It was like something had been carved out of my being and put down on a table in front of me, some times I just put it in a box and left it there till I had some space and to could admire the work that I had done. This was particularly true with pieces that I spent a long time on.

Though for me the out spiral was experienced as something painful it is not always the case. As I became more able to give good expression to the ideas in my mind I have become more and more proud of the work that I do.

Spiraling outward and giving expression to a dream or idea is what is most important. Starting at the potent center of a discovery we must make the choice to find ways to give the insight a form or to let it languish as a dream.

Spirals

Spirals are a picture of two very potent and primal experiences that we as human beings are constantly having. With anything that we do we are either discovering and going inward or finding expression and living out that which we have understood.

Resistance allows for understanding. If something is too easy then it is taken for granted and not appreciated; however, when sculpting metal there is time to experience the form grow and to feel how the form is given expression in three dimensions.

The first shape that I sculpted as a jeweler was a spiral, the shape says so much if you take the time to experience it.

Spirals are beautiful and intriguing. Wearing a spiral is a reminder that we are alive, questioning, and finding a way to express our understanding.

“Resistance allows for understanding.”