Undulation III, 2006

Russian filigree and Roman chain choker

The lines of filigree in the Undulation series were inspired by the design for the Sarabande section of the Toronto Music Garden. Back in the late 90s I watched a PBS documentary on the collaboration between cellist Yo Yo Ma and landscape architect Julie Moir Messervy to design the garden, based on Ma's performance of Bach's Suite #1 in G Major for Unaccompanied Cello. Messervy’s concept for the garden was to translate each movement of the suite into an individual section or garden room to allow visitors to physically inhabit the music. For the suite’s Sarabande movement, which Bach based on an ancient Spanish dance, she sought to design a room that would be a contemplative poet's corner with an inward, almost Art Nouveau styled, spiral.   

At that time I was fascinated with the Chartres labyrinth pattern and often walked a floor canvas version near where I lived.  I incorporated the pattern into a few pieces, but ultimately I wanted to capture the feel of the turns in a more abstracted form.  The spiral that moved inward, circled back on itself, and came out into another shape was as perfect as Bach's *Sarabande* itself.

The compound curves of Russian filigree I employed to interpret the idea in the first two pieces of the series reminded me of water and morphed into the wave patterns of Undulation III, in which I worked to evoke a similar feel of movement as the Japanese woodblock prints of Hokusai.

While in Toronto in 2013 I was finally able to visit the garden. The Sarabande garden room is surrounded by conifers and deep red Japanese maple trees and evokes both a sense of deep introspection and continuous movement. I remember taking a deep breath before walking into the Sarabande’s spiral, wondering if the real garden would live up to my imaginings after so many years.  I walked into the spiral and part way back out, feeling as though I was able to walk the lines of my own small scale artwork on a massive scale. The experience was exquisite serenity.