Palmer Seeley
Nautilus by Tom
Baril
Fahey/Klein Gallery,
Los Angeles
The spiral is a spiritualized
circle.
In the spiral form, the circle, uncoiled, unwound, has ceased to
be vicious; it has been set free. I thought this up when I was a
schoolboy, and I also discovered that Hegel's triadic series [...] expressed merely the essential spirality
of all things in their relation to time. Twirl follows twirl, and every
synthesis is the thesis of the next series. If we consider the simplest
spiral, three stages may be distinguished in it, corresponding to those of the
triad: We can call the
“thetic" the small curve or arc that initiates the convolution centrally;
“antithetic" the larger arc that faces the first in the process of continuing
it; and
“synthetic" the still ampler arc that continues the second while
following the first along the outer side. And so on.
A colored spiral in a small
ball of glass, this is how I see my own life.