What better place for contemplation in a city than a coffee joint? Well, perhaps I exaggerate; perhaps I am merely drawn in by the image of the typical urban college student, sitting over a cup of java, pencil in an absently doodling hand, staring out of a huge window and pondering the nature of crowd behavior as a mass of business suits pass her by on the street outside. I don't know - but there are two of said coffee joints each within less than a block (okay, they're across the street) of Macalester College's campus. Unfortunately, I never seemed to be that girl staring out the window because whenever I was inside Coffee News I was either meeting someone then leaving, or engaged in a serious discussion. My first glance at Gregory Euclide's work, on my way out the door, made me want to stop in my tracks and sit down with a good view of the wall. Forget the window. Here was something that could absorb my attention.

"I might be formulating theories on coffee bubbles and karma when you come in," Euclide said in a final email to me arranging our meeting in Minneapolis at the Espresso Royale Cafe. I arrived a little early, so while I awaited my mint hot chocolate I indulged myself and stared at some of Euclide's newest work. I extracted my gaze forcibly when asked to pay, and then attempted to contemplate my drink in order not to be so absorbed. Nevertheless, even during my conversation with Euclide my eyes would wander to one of his pieces and then just stay there. A silence would develop, but I don't think either of us minded as we were both momentarily lost in the levels and the layers of his paintings. Euclide summed it up perfectly toward the end of our chat: "When a piece works well, you can watch it like TV."

Euclide's pieces work with the microcosmic, the macrocosmic, and the slices of life in between. He's fascinated by formulas and calculations, and the infinite web of connections, mathematic and otherwise, that create any person's typical day, year, or lifetime. His comment regarding "coffee bubbles and karma" is so appropriately him; his mind jumps agilely along the pathways that inevitably connect the common, everyday things with the overarching themes of life itself. His works naturally reflect this; while they are beautiful from a distance, presenting an image of peaceful unity, it is vitally important that you approach them, and peer at them with your nose less than a foot away, to see the organized chaos deep within.

Have you ever seen the video that they seem to show in every high school or college astronomy class? This video starts with a view of a family having a picnic on a red-and-white checkered blanket, then moves further and further away, increasing the distance by powers of ten. Before you know it, you're viewing the continent, then the planet, then the solar system. Out and out it goes, and the only sound is the narrator's voice as he recites the increasingly incomprehensible distance. Finally, you see our galaxy adrift in a sea of other galaxies, and then the count begins in reverse. Closer and closer to the family you zoom until it goes in, deep into the hand of the father as it lies upon the blanket. You see skin cells and capillaries, red blood cells, then electrons orbiting the nucleus. Finally we see the atomic structure, the small particles inside that thing formerly believed to be the non-divisible foundation of life. Strange that it looks similar to the cosmic dance seen just a minute earlier.

It is just those similarities that Euclide is fascinated with. "The further we go into things, the more it looks like we're further away," he said wonderingly as he cups his hot black coffee. His eyes moved animatedly around him as he talked, wandering around the room, past the crowd of cheerful drinkers in the back, to his pieces on the wall, to the man next to the window typing upon his laptop, then back to me. I asked him why he created. "To make something to show how happy I am about existing," he said. As he described it, everyone has his or her own inner complexity. Sometimes, he said, he will go out to a forest and just lie under the pine trees, becoming still within himself while valuing anew the complexity around him. What appears to be a quiet forest scene is really full of life, as most people probably know but don't really appreciate. When Euclide returns to the studio, he's aware of this, yet he's also paradoxically aware of his own inner complexity and the outer stillness. He spoke of attempting to push his inner complexity out and onto the canvas. It is simple, but at the same time it's not.

Euclide's work embraces these seeming contradictions of life. What is simple, and what is complex? Everything is both at once; depending upon the level you choose to look from. His pieces, which may seem to the viewer rather cold, dependent upon just harsh mathematical formulae, are actually full of the stuff of life. Euclide wants to "reveal the humanity inside the data." The small phrases and words that draw you in, the large themes that force you to take a step back, all demand the participation of the viewer (much like life, to extend the comparison).

As you may guess, I am only here able to enunciate one facet of Euclide's work. His pieces have multiple meanings present upon multiple layers. They contain, as he puts it, "symbolism which has duality" - in other words, those black swishes are not oriental writing, nor silhouettes of pine trees, nor telephone poles. They're none of these and all of them, but they are also the pattern a feather makes as it falls, swishing and swaying back and forth due to air resistance and stray breezes. People ask him about the meaning of his work, but he has a hard time explaining it. How do you talk about something that is essentially a life experience? How do you communicate that which cannot be put into mere words or even mere images? This is Euclide's quest, perhaps the quest of all artists to some extent, and whether or not it makes sense to you or me is, not to be insulting, somewhat beside the point. Euclide knows that he can't force people to contemplate his work, nor does he want to. But he wants it to be there for those who wish to find it. And perhaps the rest of us can pause along our journeys through life to sit for a bit in front of some good wall space, and contemplate our own coffee bubbles and karma.

If you'd like to see more of Gregory Euclide's work and learn a bit about his philosophies, you can visit his website at circuitthinkers.cjb.net or email him at geuclide@mn.rr.com.