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Fibonaccian Variations 14                         34" x 55" x 3"
Award for Excellence
Society of American Registered Architects 2003
Fibonaccian Variations 13                        34" x 55" x 3"
     Fibonaccian Variations 12                    34" x 55" x 3"
                  Fibonaccian Triptych II                60' x 96" x 7"
         Fibonaccian Triptych I                    29" x 52" x 5"
  Fibonaccian Variations 11        16" x 24" x 5"
      Fibonaccian variations 10              32" x 45" x 5"
 

 

T h e   R e c e n t   A r t   o f   J o s e p h   S t e l l a

"The senses delight in things duly proportioned." St. Thomas Aquinas

In recent years, Joseph Stella's work has involved an exploration of some visual phenomena evidenced both throughout many of nature's structures, and in much of the great art and architecture of the past two thousand years. The thirteenth century Italian mathematician, Leonardo da Pisa, known as Fibonacci, was the first to make these observations, and to formulate a series of numbers known as the Fibonacci Sequence which describe in mathematical terms these phenomena.

               Each number in the series 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55 etc., was developed by adding the two previous numbers. The ratios of any two adjacent numbers in the series, 3:5 or 34:55 are approximately constant. It is this ratio, occurring in pentagons, circles, etc., which describes what has become known as the Golden Rectangle. This esthetically pleasing proportion is present in architecture in buildings ranging from the Parthenon at Athens in ancient Greece to the work of the twentieth century architect Le Corbusier. It can also be observed in paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Seurat and Mondrian, among multitudes of others.

In nature, this proportion also describes the spiraling of many forms, ranging from the chambered nautilus shell, the curve of elephant's tusks, the horns of wild sheep, and canaries claws, to the spiraling in the head of a daisy.

Beginning with a curiosity about these phenomena, Joseph Stella began his explorations. The resulting work, while based on these described phenomena, becomes the artist's very personal interpretation of these phenomena.