Fr. Joachim, was a Benedictine monk at St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN. I was in his class when St Johns began building their new church (consecrated in 1961). Fr Joachim noticed that the floor plan for the church showed the main worship area was very close in dimensions to a Golden Rectangle. He believed that the acoustics would be better if the dimensions were modified by the few inches required to be closer to the golden rectangle in proportions. He was able to convince the architects to modify their design slightly to take      advantage of the golden rectangle’s characteristics. The floor plan below shows that the alter is very close to what would be the spiral’s center in the rectangle. Keep in mind that the drawing I made shows the spiral’s center on the right side but I could have 

reversed it and ended on the left side. So the altar (in red below) would be at the vortex of sound. The church is now over 50 years old and is highly regarded in architectural circles for its unique design. I can say from personal experience that the acoustics are phenomenal.

This “New Dawn Trilogy” is three paintings influenced primarily by the song "Morning Has Broken". The idea came from the theme of our wedding ceremony when Dorothy and I were married. This was a new dawn ("Morning Has Broken" was the opening song of our wedding ceremony). We anticipated that we would be mating for life (Geese also mate for life and therefore were a symbol of our life long commitment) and finally, we anticipated following a Road Less Traveled - for a number of reasons. Lob Pines were a trail marker for 

early explorers. Canoers would lob the middle branches out of a lone Pine tree near the entrances and exits of the lakes that crossed their river trails. So, the Lob Pine, new dawns, and geese became symbolic of our marriage and are characterized on our wedding rings. These symbols of our relationship became the inspiration for these three paintings. I also looked for new dawns in our Judeo-Christian heritage and realized that Noah's Ark, also had a new dawn message from the old testament of the Bible.  

This is a wall of hexagons made by a group of children of all ages at the Math on-a-Stick Exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair. I was showing children that math can also be art - blurring the boundaries between math and art!  I was able to work with children for several hours on one day of the Minnesota State Fair each year for several years.  We worked with different geometric figures each year and created walls, mobiles and other figures, fnding ways to  use math to create art. 

The bulge pictures were made using a grid transformation process that, as far as I know, was first used by M. C. Escher in the early to mid 1900's.  The picture on the right is a graphic depiction of the process.  The first square is the building as it stands with a grid of equal sized squares superimposed on it.  The middle figure is a grid with the same number of squares as the first grid but the middle square is several times the size of the sqaures in the first grid (similar to Grid  6  in the buldge derivative section of this site).  The content of the squares are then copied into the equivalent square in the grid.  The result in this case is the bulging Landmark Center.

Coventry Cathedral in England was bombed out during WWII but the walls remained standing. When the war was over, while preserving the original walls, the church was rebuilt and dedicated to peace. My daughter was stationed in England and took us on a tour of the area in 2006. I was impressed with the work taken to rebuild and dedicate the cathedral to a mission of peace. When I painted it in 2016, although the new church was built in the same material, I felt the old shell represented its ghostly past.  The painting now hangs in one of the residence buildings at Demontreville, a Jesuit retreat center in Lake Elmo, MN.  
Another aside about this painting – when I started painting the picture, I realized the photos I had taken ten years earlier were not quite adequate for my painting. I used Google Earth to put myself on the street in front of the Cathedral and was able to fill in some key details. I also accidently put myself in the middle of the cathedral and was able to see from the inside what the stained glass windows of the new church looked like. This helped me with the colors of the windows from the outside.

My sons, Chris and Jesse, nephew, Kevin and I flew to Anchorage. Then we drove to Homer with interesting wild life stops along the way.  The next morning we left the harbor early with our guide and host, " Capt Pete".  We enjoyed the day and came home with a nice catch despite not having landed any of the notorious trophies known to prowl those waters.   Homer Dawn and Bound For The Halibut Grounds were based on pictures taken that morning. This picture was  taken at the end of that day.