The best things come in threes. Or was that just celebrity deaths? –Either way, three is a powerful number.
There is something oddly satisfying about a group of three: Three objects can create symmetry, three links can form a circle, and three phrases can make a list lyrical.
In Kevin Robb’s latest sculpture in his Calypso series, Calypso #62, three red and curving panels connected by stainless fastenings, each with different designs etched into the surface, hang together to create a shape pleasing to the eye and yet still evocative to the viewer.
The middle panel swerves in directions opposite to its brothers and has markings like that of cursive letters; the left hand panel has circles like red blood cells patterned into it; the right, swirls to remind one of roses. Each unique and yet all having the same sheen that create the illusion of movement to the viewer. A sea of floating scripts, a shower of roses, a microscopic stream of blood. What do they have in common?
I think we’ve all been a part of a group of three at some point in our lives.
Sometimes we’re on the end of a threesome, the almost-third-wheel that’s a little bit more different than the other two. Always a little awkward but trying so hard, we never really fit into this lop-sided friendship, but instead find ourselves standing on the edge and peering in.
Or maybe we’re the connecting piece — the emotional translator in a friendship between two extreme personalities, the child between two divorced parents, the one that makes the other two make sense. We are the common denominator and we are good at pulling people together to show them their similarities, not their differences.
But the best kind of three is when we find the right three, all just similar enough and different enough to form a perfect bond. It means that we perfectly round each other out and create something greater and more beautiful through our connection.
You’ve seen it. There’s something of a mystery about it. How could three be so unique yet incomplete without the other two? Together they are stronger. Take just even one away and an empty space is left that changes the other two and makes them somehow lesser than they were.
Three is powerful!
Guest blogger Sarah Ampleman
