C25H52

(Fibonacci's Snail. Click Here To Learn About Fibonacci's Sequence)


The Universe is a complex and awe-inspiring place. It continues to challenge and surprise us at every turn, opening up new perspectives and opportunities the longer we look.

As far back as we can look into our history, we have been awe inspired by the seemingly magical world around us. Magnets. Perfect Spirals. Rainbows. Animals that live in unlivable conditions; at the Oceans floor around lava flow, worms in solid ice. The Universe thrives, against all odds. Not to mention meteors and the complex Celestial world above us.

In the past, we attributed these things to gods, magics, karma. Now, we are able to watch in wonder at our world, and then take a closer look, inspecting and decoding these wonders into something we can understand, something we can track and predict. Beneath the surface is a world teaming with information: numbers, genomes, orbital patterns. It can all be tracked. Those things we don't understand now, we will later. Our understanding evolves, and grows exponentially.


(Click Here to see a diagram of the temperature of Plasma on a candle.)

I'm just an artist. A human being with a lot of curiosity and an addiction to drawing and numbers. I'm trying to bridge the gap between the wonder we see in our every day lives and the fact that it is made of reliable, organized information. After all, it's the numbers, the code that make it beautiful.

These are 2 of my newest pieces that I will be showing in August and September with Portland City Art at Pioneer Place in Portland Oregon. They are from the Science and Math portion of the show, and are an effort to show that the beauty we see in the world around us has a method. This is the secrets beneath the beauty.

"C25H52"
14" x 11" Scratch Board Numberism etching.



The Candle wax is drawn with the molecular make up of Paraffin ( C25H52). The flame is drawn with the temperature of plasma at it's different points on a candle (800 C - 1400 C). The woman is drawn with the numbers of the clock, 1 - 12, signifying time in this fleeting moment. All of my people in my Science and Math series will be drawn with time, as this is all we have, and all we can hope for. We are experiencing this moment as sentient human life against all odds. We might as well take advantage of it while we can.


Details:



"Fibonacci's Snail"
4" x 7" Scratch Board Numberism Etching



Fibonaccis Sequence maps out a naturally occuring phenonenon that we see in nature and space. Pine Cones, Pineapples, Snails, the arrangement of seeds on a sunflower. They all follow the pattern perfectly.

Mathematically speaking, you simply start with 0 and 1 , add the two numbers to get your next number and do so again and again, adding the last 2 numbers.
0 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 6765 10946 ...
Creating a perfect spiral. This drawing is drawn with these numbers.




Detail:




Both of these pieces are available as prints on our FrogFaith online gallery at www.FrogFaith.com/gallery

I will be exhibiting these along with the rest of my Evening Series and Math & Science Series at Pioneer Place in Portland Oregon, August and September 2010. More information coming soon. These are Numberism drawings etched on Scratch Board.

"2 am"

I've officially exhibited my newest Numberism piece, "2 am" at the PCA's "A Rainy Day Wildfire"
(The original will be hanging through May at OMCC).
So here it is, for your viewing pleasure.

This is a 16" x 20" scratch board numberism drawing, drawn with the numbers of the clock, 1 - 12, signifying time in a fleeting moment. Each piece focuses on moments we cherish once the sun sets. Much of the series will be more adult in nature.

Each piece in my Evening piece will be titled between 6pm and 6am. This is the first. I have about four more of these already planned, and there will be 12. I am employing the services of three Portland Photographers to shoot these pieces, including Ian Dawson and Benjamin Frothingham. When I exhibit, we will be showing both my drawings and their original photography.

Below are a few detail shots of the piece. I'm not telling of the specifics, but there are secrets in this drawing....

Prints available at www.FrogFaith.com/gallery @ My Etsy account at www.SiennaMorris.Etsy.com and @ My Redbubble account at Sienna.Redbubble.com

Model: Talia Burkett.

Endless

There will never be enough time. I will never be fulfilled. My desires will never be sated. I know this, and it terrifies me and it fuels me. How can we possibly be satisfied with this life? It is so short.

I know that at some point, I will die, and most likely, my last thought will be of regret, because I can never be satisfied. It will never be enough. I want a hundred lifetimes, a hudnred thousand lifetimes. I want it to never end. It's so cruel to know how precious this is, how rare, and unlikely our lives here on planet Earth are and to know just how limited it is. To know that it will all end far before we can know what it is we will be missing.

And we fill it, we fill it with insecurity and doubt and useless things that waste our lives, mislead them down unimportant paths. I want so much more.

OH to give me immortality. There is nothing more I want than that. There is nothing more to have. To never die. I wish I believed there was something else, because knowing this is it, knowing there is nothing else is the worst feeling. It is so cruel. It is unfair, and to know what you will be losing, without the ability to change it is so unjust. God!... if only I believed in one!

This is not enough! I am a quarter through an average lifetime and I'm nowhere near a quarter full.

At any point, our fragile lives can end. A crash, lightning, an earthquake, deep vein thrombosis, and it's all over. That's all she wrote, and we won' t even be there to miss it.

The five stages, right? I'm aleady in it. Stuck in disbelief, stuck in denial and bargaining. There must be a way around this, a way to live forever. I know what I'll be missing! It's all that I haven't yet experienced. All the people I could meet, all the things I could learn, all the days I could etch into my human mind. There is so much and I want to fill every ounce of me with it, but doesn't this world know that there is more room in me than just one life can fill?!!?!?!?!?

I will give and give and give all that this world, this universe needs, to keep me alive. I will sacrafice, and love, and adore, and comit to life on this planet, and I will be magnificent, if only I can do it forever!! If only I had the chance. If only we had the opportunity to live life to it's fullest, to live without end. If only there wasn't a limit to life here on this planet, with these ambiguous people and our ambigous lives. If only we had time to experience all of it. I would drink every moment fully and be drunk on the endlessness of it.

Numberism Wedding

For Christmas, I was commissioned to draw a numberism portrait of this couple's wedding day. The husband ordered the drawing for his wife for a Christmas present. I am told she loved it. :)

I was given this photograph to draw from, which captured a beautiful moment of the couple on the bridge were they took their vows.



It was less than 2 weeks before Christmas, and we were all getting ready for the Festival of The Last Minute, not to mention that I was still working on the Comic Book. I wondered if I could draw it in time. My partners picked up the slack for all the printing and stretching responsibilities and let me draw. Tab, unfortunately got very sick for the entire week, and so while I was busy drawing, the rest of our group was pouring blood sweat and tears into the coming week to compensate for the missing players.

The drawing flowed from me. I haven't worked on a numberism drawing since "Transitional" (the fall tree and leaves), and I had finished that over a month ago. I missed it. The calm, the precision, the almost meditative effects of drawing numberism. It was no trouble at all to finish it in time. It was a pleasure. I decided to draw the bouquet of roses in full color and have the pedals fly off into the next moment, signifying that while time progresses, they are still together; solid despite the passage of each moment.

I wasn't able to scan it in time, so I don't have as good of close ups as I could have, but my friend managed to take pretty good photos of the final piece so I could share it with you.

This drawing is 16" x 24". Micron pens on Vellum paper.

Notes That Warm The Heart

I've received a few wonderful thank you notes lately, and wanted to share them with you. These are a few that really touched me.

As an artist, there's really two parts to my work. The first half, is expressing the world around me as a way to understand and deal with our life. The other half is the hope that it will connect with someone else in the world, and that through my art, we can communicate and relate.

I live for this, and it makes my day.

"My wife & I just bought a print of your sketch "The Butterfly Effect" at the Saturday Market today. I guess I just wanted to let you know that we can't quit staring at it (already up on the wall and, come to find out, easily visible from passers-by on Hawthorne). Thanks for capturing our attention and helping us Portland newcomers dream again."

"I just wanted to send my appreciation for your message given on the back of the piece that we purchased. It amazes me...the profound significance that message has to my life's path. It validates an underlying question I've had in believing in this journey. THANK YOU and the perfection of the the universe."

These are two poems someone we met at Saturday Market wrote about Tabulanis' work and my own. How touching that he was compelled to write a poem about it!

" The Woman Who Draws With Time

the favorite pastime
of humankind
is trying to grasp time
to seize the moment
failure is inevitable
unless
you use time to
de-line-ate
the fleetingness
of a first kiss
the caress
of breeze on leaves
a child's wonder
at the alien magical beauty
of a butterfly
or the joyous synthesis
of harmonic co-operation
illustrating
the eternalness
of now."


The Grottoes Of My Mind
then there's an artist
who paints the grottoes
of my mind.
complete with the skeletons
of love I've killed
and impenetrable shadows
hiding horrors
which I'll never admit
into sunlight.
but the tranquil beauty of nature
the calm azure
of a peaceful pool
and the flowing lines
of ochre stone
ameliorate the nightmare
of the prison of ego."

Perpetual Motion Calendar

I just created my first Perpetual Motion RedBubble calendar, which has each piece from the series.

There are three calendars to choose from,

Original Series

The first calendar shows the series in it's Original Form, with the earlier graphite drawings, transitioning into pen and finally the full color tree drawing. They are ordered, month to month, as I originally drew them (to the best of my memory).

Sepia Series
The second calendar shows the series in sepia and original pen coloring

Color Series

The final calendar shows the series in sepia, special color pieces and pen coloring.

I also just saw a redubble notice on Shipping. If you are looking to purchase prints, calendars or TShirts from RedBubble for Christmas, here are your deadlines to get them to you in time:

• United States

  T-Shirts: 17 December
  Prints & Cards: 13 December

• Calendars: 13 December

Also, I noticed that if you buy 3 calendars (and possibly, 3 of anything), you get free shipping! These calendars are $32.50

12

A year ago, I started a series that became the most challenging and rewarding artwork I've ever had the pleasure of working on. Yesterday, I celebrated the completion of this series at the soft opening of our gallery in NW Portland.

"Perpetual Motion" came out of necessity. I needed the reminder to live in the present. Knowing that my life is a collection of "now", I had to motivate myself not to waste a single moment of it. It was the worry and anxiety that was ruining it for me, and I needed to replace that with gratitude and wonder.

So first came the concept, and then out of that came the technique. How could I draw a moment? How could I illustrate just how fleeting it is? I wanted to show the singular point in which the moment exists and how the procession of time is constantly taking effect and moving that moment to the next, always reinventing the "now".

So, I decided to capture the fleetingness of time in a moment by drawing the piece entirely with the numbers of the clock, 1 - 12, so that my pieces could depict all 4 dimensions in how we experience life. That is how Numberism came to be.

It all started with anxiety. I imagined that my first piece would be wrought with it. Instead, something beautiful happened. The first drawing was Falling To Pieces, and instead of an anxious, panicky piece, it was wonderful, showing the beauty and potential of a moment. I look at them and see a couple who are truly alive, living for the moment and taking everything from it that they can. It's clear that the moment is temporary, that it's already going away, but instead of worry, I feel calm looking at that piece. It's okay that it's passing; in fact, it's wonderful.



Each successive piece that followed brought me closer to being at peace with now. To have hope and determination for the future, but to be actively a part of what's going on around me now. It seemed the most honest thing to do.



If I found a way to actually be present for each moment in my life, in the end, despite what happens in my life; if I fail or succeed at each venture, in the end, it would be MY life. I could not ask for more.




We are here for such a short time, and I'd hate to waste this one great opportunity with meaningless things as worry, doubt and busy daily life.


For the past month, I have been working on the 12th and final piece to "Perpetual Motion". Last night, I showed it for the first time. It is a 19" x 24" full color numberism illustration. This piece breaks away from the rest of the series as it is the first to completely come from my mind. No photos were used for this piece. In a way, that makes this piece more intimate for me.

This final piece, which is still unnamed, seems the perfect end to the series. Showing the changing colors of fall, it depicts the passing of time in a way we all know well. The leaves turn yellow, red and brown, allowing the tree to survive the coming winter by falling off it's branches. This gives it new life, new opportunity. Rebirth, if you will. The passing of the leaves allow the tree to go on.

I think this is an important part of the piece to focus on. If those fleeting moments hadn't passed, and if we were not able to let them go, then we could never reach the opportunity of the next moment. It's with each passing moment that we get a new one.




So when I look at this piece, I am grateful for the chaos of our lives, for the constant stream of opportunities laid before us with the death and birth of each new day. Each person you meet, each project you begin or disband. Each success and failure. Each time a moment passes. I'm here for the next.




That frame, by the way, is a window frame I painted. When you think of fall, don't you think of watching the leaves fall outside your window?

Thanks to Hassy, we have good scans of this image and are working on making prints now. (Small prints will not be available for this, because the numbers are too small to begin with).

We hope to have prints of this tomorrow at Saturday market.




Click on the close ups for a better view.