Fibonacci’s Trace # 3

Artist Marcia Chaves
Fibonacci’s Trace # 3,
Oil, 24” x 24”
Many iconic patterns in nature reveal the Fibonacci sequence, the Golden Ratio, a design fundamental visible in flowers, shells, and even the swirling winds of a  hurricane.  The Fibonacci  numbers  are those that result by adding each of  the previous two:  1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21  and so forth.   The moon shell spirals flow in accordance with this progression, the whorls in ever increasing size in harmonious order.    This  fragment here, transported from an Atlantic beach to a quiet suburb of Fredericksburg in the sandy pocket of a pair of jeans, reveals the crushing of powerful currents and perhaps footsteps along the shore, shattering the once perfect carapace,  now riddled with holes made by  predators, battered  by ocean forces unknown, revealing the innermost structure of the snail.    The sum of these encounters engenders the broken shell with a beauty in its imperfection and age,  but nevertheless graceful and elegant.