Artwork of Trisa Haisma

For over a decade I have been working in wood and designing things in linear patterns. All my work was with squares and rectangles. Over the past few years, I have been drawn away from the rectangle and embarking on exploring and discovering the circle. Squares offer a simplicity and orderly way of creating things. Much of man's desire is to create order out of the "chaos of nature", and yet I don't think we have arrived at order...just a simplified form of creation that seems to fight nature. We take a tree that grows cylindrically and cut it into linear boards and fight the nature of the tree to go back to the curve. Nothing grows square in nature. I believe there is an intelligence in embracing the circle in its many forms and have embarked on stepping out of the square and its "comfort zone" into a this new space of discovery within the circle.

What is SOZOZOE? This is a combination of two Greek words: sozo and zoe. They happen to be two words that I am quite fond of. Sozo means to be saved, healed, rescued, made whole, and restored. It is restoration of the physical, mental and spiritual at the same time. Zoe means life. (It has also been a name that I have loved since I was a child. If I had a daughter, her name would be Zoe.) Together they are "restored life". I love seeing things (and people) restored, come back to life, rejuvenated, healed, and redeemed. It is more the way of "the circle of life"; nothing is lost just reconfigured in and made new. I also like that it contains 3 Os...or 3 circles!