By Eric Baxter
Staff Writer

NHTI employee and artist Adam Welch melded the Golden Ratio and graffiti art to create the school’s newest mural. Welch delved into the mystical nature of the ratio while studying abroad

Phi, the Golden Mean, the Golden Ratio – all terms for one of the universe’s biggest mysteries. For whatever reason, the ratio of 1 to 1.618033, ad inifinitum, crops up with alarming regularity in any number of places. The numbers can be found in the shape of a nautilus shell and the beat of a heart. They can also be readily discerned in the design of the Great Pyramids, the Parthenon, Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral, and in Leonardo da Vinci’s layout of “The Last Supper.”

Recently, another location was added to the list – the mathematics and engineering building at the New Hampshire Technical Institute in Concord.

For the artist, Adam Welch, the completion of the mural was not the first time he had done large-scale public art. Of course his pieces are usually found on building walls, overpasses and in alleyways, rather than stretching over a more than 5-foot-by- 5-foot square on a wall of the building’s café. Having permission to do the work was a change as well.

“This was something I wanted to do for a while,” said Welch, 28, who works in the institute’s media services department, “but I wanted to do something that was appropriate for the building, something to do with math, and architecture, and engineering.

Welch had encountered the Golden Mean, also known as the Divine Ratio, during his studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. The school had no grades, no tests, no exams, and no majors. Students were left to follow their own educational path, and Welch’s path took him to more than 20 countries, and he returned with a wide appreciation of the world and art. Lodged in that appreciation was knowledge of the Golden Mean.

“(The Golden Ratio) is the bridge between mathematics and hard science and nature. It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe,” he said.

Welch created the mural by first troweling wet plaster over the building’s painted concrete wall, and added color and texture with a variety of paints and finishes while the plaster was still wet. The final work was sealed with lacquer.

The main element of the piece is a sweeping arc echoing the shape of a nautilus shell, or the curve of a wave. This is the physical manifestation of the Golden Rule, done appropriately in gold tones. Taking up the remaining space is a structured chaos of lines and shapes, a more refined version of Welch’s late-night graffiti forays. The two disparate forms, however, get along better than expected – though not all people think so.

“I already received a three-page critique taped to it,” said Welch with a laugh. “And someone else left a sticky note on it with a less than- glowing comment.”

Like the Golden Ratio, the mural has levels that appear only after exploration.

“This was the original classroom building for the school from 40 years ago,” said NHTI president Lynn Kilchenstein, who was in the café showing the piece to her mother. She added that NHTI had started as a two-year engineering and technical institute. “That’s the heart of the school.”

While the physical representation of the Golden Rule encompasses the school’s beginnings, Kilchenstein said the more modern filler of urban-art-done-large speaks well to NHTI’s addition of visual arts to the curricula.

As to the comments, Kilchenstein, the daughter of an illustrator who trained under N.C. Wyeth, said art was meant to evoke emotion and Welch succeeded.

“People looked at it and had a reaction. That’s good,” she said.

Welch said the primary influence for the piece was his recent travels through the Islamic Middle East, and the primary reason he created the mural was to add mystery and beauty to a rather bland space.

But ultimately, he said quoting Picasso contemporary and artist Paul Klee, he was just taking a line for a walk.

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