The chapel — The moment of recognition

As I sketched the interior of the Chapel of St. Ignatius, I began to recognize something familiar in the way Steven Holl shaped the space. The openings cut into the architectural forms seemed to carve light from solid mass, creating a relationship between what was present and what had been removed.

It brought to mind my own exploration of Square Kufic Arabic text. In this geometric form of calligraphy, letters emerge through the arrangement of lines, blocks, and voids. The spaces between the forms are as important as the forms themselves.

I had explored these relationships in my paintings, but seeing them expressed through architecture allowed me to understand them differently. What I was responding to in the chapel was not simply the presence of light, but the way space was shaped to receive it.

For the first time, I could clearly articulate a connection between two practices that had long been part of my life: architecture and Square Kufic. Both offered a way of thinking through structure, proportion, subtraction, and the relationship between solid and void.