My passion is kaleidoscopes–real ones. I took a stained glass class years ago so I could eventually start making stained glass scopes...one of these days. In the meantime kaleidoscopes have spilled over into my artwork. Heck, even my domain name SwarDrawS is kind of kaleidoscopish.

The idea of this patterns series started when I took all the digital video I shot of Hollace and authored a series of 3 DVDs. The animated intro on those DVDs was of a kaleidoscope pattern that actually got its starts with a virtual kaleidoscope I made a year before that. I found the imagery while watching the DVDs on TV very relaxing and pondered a series of patterns I could create for DVD. This is the results of those pondering. For those on my Christmas card list, this technique might look familiar.

There are two parts to this project. First there is the print pieces. These are 13"x13" framed prints with the main section mounted on a 12" foam core circle fastened to a darkened blurred version of the pattern. Then there is the animations set to music authored to DVD.

I think the last time I updated this page (over 5 years ago), 56k modems were still all the rage. Well maybe not the rage but still commonly used so I put in a disclaimer here about download times. The videos on these pages are still kind of on the big size so you may see a delay but I am really updating this page to put in a disclaimer that the elements (the print and video portions) will not be viewable if viewing on an iPhone or iPad as they were built in Flash. If I am ever feeling ambitious and have oodles of free time, I may see if I can redo in HTML5 or JQuery or something.