Isometric solid

It is of course his nature to distrust any word he cannot find in the dictionary. And yet they always intrigue him, these words that come to common usage and yet may not actually exist. Not at least beyond the level of subculture. They seem to him so much like homeless wanderers. Like him when he was young.

Take for instance the word “isometric,” which does not register in his computer’s dictionary. He figures it must figure in some dictionary somewhere since he’s been using it since high school. And he had been taught the word not just by one teacher but many. The many including even the famous architect Melva Java who was his favorite teacher in engineering school at the University of San Carlos in Talamban. He took two years of that before moving into the arts.

And yet, even as an artist he remembers how useful they were, those lessons he learned about plane and solid geometry. And since he is a sculptor then all the more he remembers technical drawing which course he took under his favorite engineering school teacher Architect Java. He remembers none other.

And today he was teaching his own design students a type of technical drawing which would have fallen under the aegis of what he learned in engineering school. Designers call it working drawing. These are drawings the designer must know how to do so he can communicate effectively with technical people, the engineering department of any manufacturing outfit.

But at its most fundamental form it is more profound than that. It is a language. The language that bridges the gap between the flat drawing and the solid form it describes. The language common to art and design and engineering.

He starts by drawing what are sometimes called “flats.” They are various views of a particular object: Front View, Back View, Left Side View, Right Side View, Top View, Bottom View. It always fascinates him how simple they look from these views. They are no more than simple geometric forms really. Even so, they are cues to a puzzle and the puzzle requires a particular process to solve.

The ability to solve it does not come easily at first. Especially for people not used to thinking this way. Not easy for people who do not yet speak the language. And it has been said that every word of a language always has two parts. The word itself and the rules related to how the word is used. The rules are always complex and harder to pin down in a logical way.

Indeed, there is something almost spiritual about the whole exercise. One may describe the process of solving this puzzle in a logical way. But always the final correct solution flashes inside a person’s mind. As if the solution itself was an actual break of the logical process. There is an “instant” like a sudden electric spark when the solution inexplicably reveals itself in the person’s mind. It is an instance of sudden insight. A coming together. A “Gestalt.” A revelation. The flash of a mystery solved.

And then the mind may move or turn the object every which way in the world of the imagination. It is always a magical moment bringing with it a palpable feeling of pleasure and fulfillment. And one must wonder if all learning occurs this way. First, the experience of not knowing when the puzzle presents itself. There is the question raised in the mind leading to other questions. And then in due course and most times quite mysteriously an answer comes to mind that proves itself by answering every question that had been or could be raised. The answer.

How pleasurable is that? He tells his students that the point of this whole exercise is none other than this pleasure itself. It is the lightning flash of creativity, the spark of genius. This feeling is essential. It must be for an artist comparable to the pleasure of sex. And true to his nature he asks his room-full of teenage students: “Has anyone here ever had sex?”

Through the laughter he gives fair warning: “Unless you’re married, it is a sin you know.”