Small Wonders

Small wonders are little realizations, brain bursts—petite verities—that strike when something suddenly makes sense. They make you smile. They make your day. You can remember them the rest of your life, or they can vanish as quickly as they arrived. If you’re open to them, they will surprise you, leaving you more complete for a fleeting moment.

They can be triggered by smell, sight, any combination of senses, or they can spring from your thoughts and emotions. You find them when you relax, when you exercise, when you become contemplative, when you listen to music or read. You find them frequently in love and memories.

The seemingly hard-edged, mathematical fields of science are dedicated to the pursuit of small wonders. Nuclear magnetic resonance imagers, electron microscopes, and elementary particle accelerators are grand machines in search of small geometric and quantum wonders, though something as simple as a 3-way switch, controlling the flow of electrons to a filament that produces photons (light) in your living room, becomes, through the magic of superfluous geometry, a small wonder at your finger tips.

After we had our kitchen remodeled in Danville, one of our 3-way switches didn’t work properly. I called the electrician who told me how to fix it. His explanation involved colored wires, not theory. Hook this to that, he told me over the phone. I followed orders and only later realized that I didn’t know how 3-way switches worked. How could it be, I asked myself, that, sans computer, sans some micro device anticipating my intentions, remembering my actions, the position of the switch, either up or down, makes no difference? I can walk into a room and turn on the lights, walk through the room, and use a second switch to turn off the lights, even though the first switch remains in what was previously the on position, the first switch having lost power—just like that—to the second. Amazing.

On my drive—my very long drive—to work, I tried to understand the phenomenon but couldn’t. At the time I was the manager of a small computer-vision startup, staffed primarily by Ph.D.s, so I took the problem to my fellow workers, claiming that though they had all used 3-way switches, that actually such switches didn’t exist. And when the world finally realizes the impossibility of such switches, I told them to convince them of the criticality of my conclusion, our lights will suddenly be extinguished.

We went into our conference room, graduates from some of the finest schools in the world, electrical engineers among them, and after about a half hour of throwing ideas around and going to the white-board, we couldn’t figure out how 3-way switches worked—a humbling experience. (Many of us claimed to have known in the past, our memories failing us when most needed, but you know how that goes.)

A little later a scientist came to my office with the amazingly simple diagram shown in this diagram. I hadn’t thought to add something extra, something seemingly superfluous, the third red wire, the third coordinate in switch-space, that made all the difference. (When the curious among you understand how to add a third switch to the circuit, let me know.)

Art works like the 3-way switch, combining geometry and quanta, electrons and photons, in deceptively miraculous ways to create small wonders, though unlike science, art is at its best when it is devoid of utilitarian purpose. (Should you find this objectionable, that art is only good for affective salvation, might I remind you that neither your dog nor cat, should you have one, is gainfully employed.)

Lawrence Kasdan’s beautiful Grand Canyon is a series of small wonders strung along a tenuous thread of fear and anxiety: A lawyer’s car breaks down in a rough neighborhood where he is accosted by toughs and saved by a tow-truck driver; a helicopter passes overhead; a director is shot but lives; an abandoned baby is found; the helicopter returns, an ominously mechanical refrain; there’s a drive-by shooting; the crises and small wonders continue. The movie closes with a visit to the Grand Canyon, a small wonder writ large.

The Plot is geometry, third wires without which the movie wouldn’t have worked. The quanta are the characters.

But movies, even at their most abstract, are real-time experiences that walk and talk like us: They usually demand less from us than modern (should I say postmodern?) visual arts.

I went to Arts Benicia’s Open Studios last weekend and began wandering. It was hot. Very hot. The heat slowed me down, and while I unfortunately saw little of the art on display, everywhere I turned I found new applications of geometry and quanta in the creation of small wonders.

Patty Picco

was in the Annex. She uses a large etching press that weighs a quarter ton to create multi-drop monotypes, one-of-a-kind artworks that she creates by painting Plexiglas plates which are pressed by big rollers against paper. Multi-drop means that she makes multiple passes, sometimes as many as five, changing the plates,

modifying her work as she does each pass. And while the texture and color of these works is arresting, I am particularly drawn to the central leaf in each frame, growing from a geometric-like filamentary background rather than from a tree. Like the golden number known implicitly by ancient architects, (1 + √5)/2, and used in the creation of the Fibonacci sequence, which ubiquitously pops up in everything from population models to flower-petal arrangements to the Carquinez Review form factor, the leaf at the center of each frame becomes the first term in an infinite geometric sequence.

And in Gregg Renfrow’s

studio on Tyler, one building down from Arts Benicia, I found the trio of paintings shown here—small, complex works, that Renfrow creates by brushing and flowing polymer paints on both sides of acrylic panels. He mounts them off the wall, allowing light—photons—to pass behind the panels. The combination of light refracted through multiple layers of color with light reflected from the surface colors produces shimmering works in motion with light, a trio of photon dancers at play on the fields of our minds.

Geometry and quanta. 3-way switches. Small wonders. The simple and sublime. Remember them all the next time you turn on a light.

	Small Wonders
	Copyright © 2001 by Dave Badtke
	Small wonders are little realizations, brain bursts—petite verities—that strike when something suddenly makes sense. They make you smile. They make your day. You can remember them the rest of your life, or they can vanish as quickly as they arrived. If you’re open to them, they will surprise you, leaving you more complete for a fleeting moment. They can be triggered by smell, sight, any combination of senses, or they can spring from your thoughts and emotions. You find them when you relax, when you exercise, when you become contemplative, when you listen to music or read. You find them frequently in love and memories. The seemingly hard-edged, mathematical fields of science are dedicated to the pursuit of small wonders. Nuclear magnetic resonance imagers, electron microscopes, and elementary particle accelerators are grand machines in search of small geometric and quantum wonders, though something as simple as a 3-way switch, controlling the flow of electrons to a filament that produces photons (light) in your living room, becomes, through the magic of superfluous geometry, a small wonder at your finger tips. After we had our kitchen remodeled in Danville, one of our 3-way switches didn’t work properly. I called the electrician who told me how to fix it. His explanation involved colored wires, not theory. Hook this to that, he told me over the phone. I followed orders and only later realized that I didn’t know how 3-way switches worked. How could it be, I asked myself, that, sans computer, sans some micro device anticipating my intentions, remembering my actions, the position of the switch, either up or down, makes no difference? I can walk into a room and turn on the lights, walk through the room, and use a second switch to turn off the lights, even though the first switch remains in what was previously the on position, the first switch having lost power—just like that—to the second. Amazing. On my drive—my very long drive—to work, I tried to understand the phenomenon but couldn’t. At the time I was the manager of a small computer-vision startup, staffed primarily by Ph.D.s, so I took the problem to my fellow workers, claiming that though they had all used 3-way switches, that actually such switches didn’t exist. And when the world finally realizes the impossibility of such switches, I told them to convince them of the criticality of my conclusion, our lights will suddenly be extinguished. We went into our conference room, graduates from some of the finest schools in the world, electrical engineers among them, and after about a half hour of throwing ideas around and going to the white-board, we couldn’t figure out how 3-way switches worked—a humbling experience. (Many of us claimed to have known in the past, our memories failing us when most needed, but you know how that goes.) A little later a scientist came to my office with the amazingly simple diagram shown in this diagram. I hadn’t thought to add something extra, something seemingly superfluous, the third red wire, the third coordinate in switch-space, that made all the difference. (When the curious among you understand how to add a third switch to the circuit, let me know.) Art works like the 3-way switch, combining geometry and quanta, electrons and photons, in deceptively miraculous ways to create small wonders, though unlike science, art is at its best when it is devoid of utilitarian purpose. (Should you find this objectionable, that art is only good for affective salvation, might I remind you that neither your dog nor cat, should you have one, is gainfully employed.) Movies, of course, demonstrate the logic of my argument. Lawrence Kasdan’s beautiful Grand Canyon is a series of small wonders strung along a tenuous thread of fear and anxiety: A lawyer’s car breaks down in a rough neighborhood where he is accosted by toughs and saved by a tow-truck driver; a helicopter passes overhead; a director is shot but lives; an abandoned baby is found; the helicopter returns, an ominously mechanical refrain; there’s a drive-by shooting; the crises and small wonders continue. The movie closes with a visit to the Grand Canyon, a small wonder writ large. The Plot is geometry, third wires without which the movie wouldn’t have worked. The quanta are the characters. But movies, even at their most abstract, are real-time experiences that walk and talk like us: They usually demand less from us than modern (should I say postmodern?) visual arts. I went to Arts Benicia’s Open Studios last weekend and began wandering. It was hot. Very hot. The heat slowed me down, and while I unfortunately saw little of the art on display, everywhere I turned I found new applications of geometry and quanta in the creation of small wonders. Patty Picco was in the Annex. She uses a large etching press that weighs a quarter ton to create multi-drop monotypes, one-of-a-kind artworks that she creates by painting Plexiglas plates which are pressed by big rollers against paper. Multi-drop means that she makes multiple passes, sometimes as many as five, changing the plates, modifying her work as she does each pass. And while the texture and color of these works is arresting, I am particularly drawn to the central leaf in each frame, growing from a geometric-like filamentary background rather than from a tree. Like the golden number known implicitly by ancient architects, (1 + √5)/2, and used in the creation of the Fibonacci sequence, which ubiquitously pops up in everything from population models to flower-petal arrangements to the Carquinez Review form factor, the leaf at the center of each frame becomes the first term in an infinite geometric sequence. And in Gregg Renfrow’s studio on Tyler, one building down from Arts Benicia, I found the trio of paintings shown here—small, complex works, that Renfrow creates by brushing and flowing polymer paints on both sides of acrylic panels. He mounts them off the wall, allowing light—photons—to pass behind the panels. The combination of light refracted through multiple layers of color with light reflected from the surface colors produces shimmering works in motion with light, a trio of photon dancers at play on the fields of our minds. Geometry and quanta. 3-way switches. Small wonders. The simple and sublime. Remember them all the next time you turn on a light.
	- Dave Badtke can be contacted at: www.CarquinezReview.com; Dave@Badtke.com; PO Box 763, Benicia, CA 94510; or by calling 707-745-5540. Article Links Home Page