THE SPIRAL PROJECT BY DAVID HARMON

Nature reclaims itself. Nothing can remain exposed in the open without change. Built and abandoned structures by humankind decay.Amidst concrete cracks and rusted steel, nature slowly grows in the form of trees and weeds sprouting up. One of my favorite paintings is the fifth and final painting of Thomas Cole, in his Course of Empire series, entitled Desolation, painted in 1836. Here nature is the overlord .Humankind is nowhere to be seen. Likewise, sculptor and writer, Robert Smithson (1938-1973) and his Spiral Jetty (1970) in the Great Salt Lake had been designed with the eventuality of this art form breaking down (entropy and the second law of thermodynamics) by nature and its elements. Today, the spiral structure has sunk into the lake with only a white salted trace remaining.

I am for an art that takes into account the direct effect of the elements as they exist from day to day apart from representation.

My simple exercise with the pecan spiral was created a few short weeks ago. Pecans are elliptical in shape and lend themselves to the spiral shape. I had also chosen pecans as they are indigenous trees found from Missouri in the north all throughout Texas and the south. Pecans when mature are prodigiously shed from pecan trees bearing this fatty nut. It had also been the sustenance for many Native Americans during especially long winters when food was scarce. I made an earth drawing on an earthen mound I had created. I implanted a series of pecans within it. Since then, the spiral had been pummeled by torrential rainfall, and birds including squirrels had eaten all of the pecans with only shells remaining. Other pecans were deliberately burned by me to hasten their breakdown. Photography depicts the spiral symbolically in sepia (life-earth bound), black and white (death/decay), and cyan (resurrection-astronomical) right side up and upside down. The shape is retained either way shown. Nothing much remains except for the basic spiral drawn into the earth by me. Eventually, this too, will atrophy and morph into something else entirely. This is fine by me.

Like all existence, on the descending scale of realities, the spiral is a symbol. It denotes eternity, since it may go on forever (from the Mystic Spiral by Jill Purse, 1974.).

THE FINAL PROJECT

detail of Final

THEFINAL SPIRAL

Concentric Convolutions

Concentric Convolutions

Small format acrylic on canvas and masonite paintings

The center, I had been taught as a student,” is too be avoided at all costs compositionally”. Yet, many cultures have embraced this circular center from basketry, the oculus of the Pantheon in Rome, to the infamous stained glass Rose window found on the south portal of the Gothic church. Radial balance demands that the eye to continuously survey all elements within this self-contained compositional universe. These concentric convolutions, as I refer to them, involve impasto acrylic applied to square small format canvases and panels. The square ironically, frames these images. We can see concentric convolutions in many forms in nature .These include, beyond our planet, the imagery revealed to us from the Hubble telescope unveils a world of giant abstract forms –nebulae, light years away. On planet earth we can see similar concentric convolutions in the human eye, whirlpools, pine cones, cabbage,satellite hurricane imagery, sunflowers, the human finger print, the whirl hair pattern atop the human head and even how water swirls before it travels down a sink drain. Electron microscopes reveal   microscopic Adenovirus particles which have circular patterns. It is this type of continuous variation I desire to explore in this series of works with seemingly endless variations.

I notice swirling patterns of dirt and pecans which coalsece into spiral shapes . It can also be scientific as theroretical physicists have examined the painterly drips and streks of Jackson Pollack’s painting process as fractals found in crystals and galaxies.The work of Marc Tobey( which Jackson  Pollack ij the 1940’s ,studied at length) such as White Journey painted in 1956, the year of Pollack’s death, is also examined as the nervous brushwork appears as action filled quarks and nuetrons.

MY NEW PAINTINGS INFORMED FROM THE SPIRAL

Concentric Convolutions#1

Concentric Convolutions#2

Concentric Convolutions#3