Thursday, January 24, 2013

Looking for the Patterns

Life has been busy round here with three separate Christmases - the family coming to stay in dribs and drabs - which has been fun but I think three is enough!!  I was beginning to feel like the guy in Ground Hog Day!   But repetition is the central point of pattern and if you look you'll see many patterns within and without your experience.

I thought I'd become very scattered making quilts, painting watercolors and then signing up for square dance lessons and coding using prime numbers!  Then I realised that it's all about patterns.

 I think patterns are what drew us into quilting in the first place.  I remember as a small child loving to visit the rose garden in the local park.  Not because of the prettiness of the flowers (though I loved the scent of roses and still do) but because of the copious dropped petals that I could retrieve and arrange into complex patterns on the old stone flags of the garden.  Of course I hadn't heard about Andy Goldsworthy and I had no photographers on hand to immortalize my efforts!!



So it was really just one step from rose petals to fabric petals in the beautiful rhythmical traditional quilt patterns (I always loved the shifting ones like Storm at Sea, or Broken Dishes) and then to square dancing.  I just couldn't figure out why square dancing would be so interesting (the other dancers are so well, "country"!!) until I realised from this website and this Japanese one  that it was the visual patterns that intrigued me.

and now to grab my code book and off to coding with primes!!  I wonder what else presents in repeating patterns?
And, if you have been, thanks for reading!
Elizabeth

5 comments:

Elsie Montgomery said...

Thanks for the thoughts and that video, which led me to more of the same. I'm blessed and inspired by the simplicity of this art. Again, thank you.

Jackie said...

I am so impressed by Andy Goldsworthy! He was here in Reno and did some installations, including one far out in the desert that I didn't get to see. The National Gallery ahs some of his work too. The textures, the shapes, the lines! All graceful and organic and fit in so well to the place they're made. thank you for this video and for your thought.

abelian said...

What is coding with primes? Being a mathematical sort, I'm curious!

Elizabeth Barton said...

Yes I love Goldsworthy's work too - have seen it in the Edinburgh botanical gardens...the video is a clip from his DVD Rivers and Tides available on Amazon.
Re coding with primes...will report back! the class is taught by Eliot Gootman the author of the major college text on Calculus.

Marcia said...

Thanks for including the Goldworthy clip -- a very nice treat!