Samuel Verbiese

Plastician artist
Overijse, Belgium

Besides expressionistic painting and sculpting of the figure and portrait, I am recurrently drawn to geometric projects, probably by previous life experiences in engineering.

I remain deeply amazed by labyrinths, ever since I discovered them when Charles Fontaine, then 90 years young, kindly sent me a booklet on the labyrinth at Chartres cathedral. This year, on the occasion of his 100th Birthday, I had to pay him here another tribute, this time by sharing some of the mental wanderings the human brain is capable of.
My 13th labyrinth at 'Les Jardins d'Aywiers' (who gracefully support my labryrinthic work, thanks to Patricia Limauge) has also been a tribute to Charles.

The text below is to be considered as part of the work, a rendering of these labyrinthic experiences.

Twisted Super Cretan Labyrinth
Twisted Super Cretan Labyrinth
36x36cm
plastic, paper, cardboard, glue, ink
2012

I was 'automatically' munching on the last crackers left during a pre-New Year party cleanup. Suddenly my attention was caught by the regular ridges of the plastic container's bottom: "WOW!, isn't that a Cretan labyrinth seed?" Cleanup was left for another day, as the precious thing needed an immediate response. Scissors cut the magic symbol out; a large enough wrapping paper waited to receive the cut-out bottom a little down from the middle (glue is always readily available...). Soon enough a black felt tip nervously looped the circuits around... By chance the leftover cardboard box showing a picture of the 'Mini-twists' jumped to my eyes, and very quickly the scissors were reducing the box to pieces. Couldn't the twists represent my wanderings through the labyrinth, crawling once on my belly, then on my back and reverse? Some more glue and a red felt tip. Add, from the nearly discarded package the advertising part, sign and serve!