Circles, Spirals and Labyrinths
Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires, Argentina
With a recent focus on a solar eclipse, I felt inspired to do a piece on circles and their various forms of incarnation.
Circular forms can be appreciated both in gilded and ornate domes as the one above or simply a metal compost bin seen on the right. (For practical purposes it also includes a ring of round holes for organic produce.)
Labyrinths, even made with a hedge, can be as perfect as the one below in the Getty Museum garden in Los Angeles. Less formal ones are made with stones, rocks and other materials.
Getty Museum Labyrinth
Compost Bin
While we come across circles and round objects in anything from bicycle wheels, tea cups, door knobs, plates, lamp shades – basically anything our hands can twist around or hold, flowers and other natural phenomena provide the most beautiful ones.
Below, are royal blue velellas (aka sea rafts) which my husband, David, arranged in a circle on the beach. Resembling me of jelly fish I didn’t touch them. However, as I learned they are non-poisonous and simply feast on kelp. Featuring transparent “fins” resembling a sail, they appeared like castaways on the sandy beach.
With a little help from our human friends we are offered “earth art”. Discovering one left behind by an individual we may never meet makes for a true gift. The cairn was particularly impressive on the same beach in California that had velallas galore.
Getting back to more practical items we can also enjoy circles as in a garden with upside down bottles or an inverted glass cup.
My favorites though remain spirals. Circle upon circle they can be as fancy as a marble hotel staircase hotel and the Teatro Colon both in Buenos Aires or simply a glass bowl in Great Barrington, MA. and a Cape Cod light house.
