Geometry for the Heart

During a recent image search, a strange anomaly appeared on my screen amid a page of Google thumbnails. It was a drawing of Buckminster Fuller's Octect Truss. The tiny digital scan imprinted itself on my memory and refused to go away so I have set about building some small pyramid skeletons and attempting to fashion my own 3 dimensional version out of paper, wood and wax.

This is not the first time I've used Bucky's mathematical phenomena for sculpture - a few years ago the geodesic domes in "Standing up steaming, slowly falling apart" (2007) were made from laser-cut sections of discarded cardboard adhered with duct-tape using a formula he invented. The domes acted as nodal gathering points in a systen designed to collect steam from boiling kettles. The cardboard buckled and sagged as the domes became saturated with hot moisture, the duct-tape loosened until the spheres reached the brink of collapse. It was a system based upon futility, made entirely out of trash, and ending in self-destruction after less than 24-hours in operation.

The energy I am bringing to the Octect Truss now is a lot lighter - more inquisitive and optimistic. I have been noticing variants of infinite triangle configurations everywhere and seeing the beginnings of life in these forms - in a daffodil along the River Wensum, in the crystalline formations of an Amethyst geode, and in the metaphysical trinity that Joseph Beuys held at the heart of his social sculpture practice.


Beuys' trinity "thinking, feeling, and will" was symbolized in his '3 Pots' action of 1974. One might say these are basic aspects of humanity. The triangle is a perfect form for a 'trinity' and has appeared in countless metaphors and ideologies since the beginning of time. As I awaken to this formulaic basis for all life, the afterimage of Bucky's triangular truss is emblazoned upon the world around me with endless potential.

In my studio I am developing small skeletal pyramids and layering liquid wax upon them. I am becoming aware of the many ways Sacred Geometry is the roots, the archetypes and the rules of the Universe. As Charles Gilhurst decreed "the more this language keeps teaching me, the more I am healed."