If the current labyrinth revival is to sustain and grow, it will require new energy and the passing of the torch from the generation that sparked it some thirty years ago. Lauren Artress’ work with labyrinths at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, and her influential Walking a Sacred Path book, first published in 1995, provided, and continue to provide, guideposts, as has the work of Robert Ferré, Jeff Saward, and many others. Lars Howlett is a Bay Area labyrinth builder who exemplifies the receiving and carrying of the torch from that generation of labyrinth leaders.
Howlett has learned well from those teachers, and he contributes his own interests and energies. Having taught photography in a high school for some 15 years before he became a full-time labyrinth builder and facilitator, Howlett is savvy with social media and digital tools. His website, Discover Labyrinths, along with a YouTube channel that gives tutorials on how to draw labyrinths, how to make temporary “pop-up” labyrinths, and other related topics, provide some of the most accessible and understandable labyrinth content available.
Howlett also has been instrumental in editing and creating content for Veriditas, the non-profit organization founded by Artress to spread knowledge of and interest in labyrinths, which has expanded its offerings online in recent years, especially during the COVID pandemic. Howlett has a knack for clarifying and teaching difficult and confusing topics; and he has a willingness to share his personal experiences to help others along in their labyrinth journey. For example, on his website and in webinars he shares his experience of traveling through Europe after a painful breakup of a long relationship, finding solace and grounding in the labyrinths he assembled from rocks or drew in the sand during his travels.
Serious-minded about his beloved labyrinths, Howlett is also quick to laugh, which makes for an endearing teaching style and engaging conversation.
JIM GARDNER (JG): On your website there’s an amazing photo gallery of labyrinths you have made, including a square labyrinth, reddish color, made of cassette tapes. How did that labyrinth come about?
LARS HOWLETT (LH): I used to have a studio in Point Richmond, which is here in the Bay Area, and there’s a gallery across the street that was doing an ‘80s art show. I had my mix tape collection from high school and college, and I thought, “Oh cool, maybe I can make a labyrinth out of mix tapes and cassettes, you know, for the ‘80s” [laughs]. And because the cassettes are rectangular I thought to make it square form, which I don’t think at that point I had done before, so I screwed the cassette tapes onto a piece of plywood and made that. The cassette tapes are stuff I would listen to on road trips. I used to—I still do—love taking road trips, high school and college road trips with friends. We’d road trip here and there and we’d always listen to these mixes. So the labyrinth is the journey and the mix tapes were on all those journeys. Since I don’t even have a tape player any more, I don’t have the ability to listen to those cassette tapes. But it was kind of fun to give them a second life and put them together into that artwork.
JG: I love that idea, and its execution.
LH: Thanks, yeah.
JG: In the keynote address you gave for the Healing Beyond Borders conference (Oct. 2020), you referred to the labyrinth as an “open source archetype.” And Hermann Kern and Lauren Artress have suggested that the major innovations in labyrinths down through history—the classical type, the Roman variation, the Chartres type—have emerged anonymously and communally rather than through any one individual artist’s efforts or work. Kern especially seems a little suspicious of individual innovation. I’m wondering how you, as a visual artist and creative person, navigate that tension between tradition and innovation. How did you arrive at embracing the “open source archetype”?
LH: Yeah, it’s interesting, because I used to be a photographer and I really believed in copyright and licensing images, because they felt like an individual perspective. If I went somewhere and took a photograph, it would be an individual perspective, a personal, individual creation. And the labyrinth is different. Like you say, with Hermann Kern and Lauren [Artress], who bases her understanding on his work, it is an anonymous creation that’s been passed down through generations, and you don’t really know the who, why, or where, or how the design initiated or evolved. And when I learned from Robert Ferré, my mentor, about creating replicas, he also had kind of a philosophy that the labyrinth is anonymous, and it’s not like, “This is the Lars Howlett labyrinth.” I mean, obviously when you’re making a Chartres labyrinth you’re recreating the Chartres labyrinth, but there are designers who sign the back of [canvas labyrinths]. But I always felt like it was disingenuous to sign a labyrinth [laughs] . . . Even labyrinths that I create, the unique contemporary designs—I feel like I’m creating those based on the archetypal patterns. And anybody could create, you know, the heart-shaped classical variation, and probably somebody else has, so who am I to say, “This is the Lars Howlett Heart Labyrinth”? It kind of defeats the purpose of the archetype, because you want people to recreate it, you want people to feel free to take the design and make use of it however they will. So if I copyrighted the heart-shaped labyrinth, that would make people less inclined to make use of it, to create finger labyrinths or artwork or T-shirts. And I feel like the more free you make the design, the more likely it’s going to spread and live and continue and gain its own energy and significance.
JG: I think that’s a refreshing approach, and I applaud you for it. I’m presuming that when you were a child, “labyrinth builder” was not on your list of future occupations, but were you good in geometry in school when you were young?
LH: Yeah. I was good at geometry and math, and I liked art. I always felt like I was visually creative, and I did make doodles of mazes and things in my notebook, or motorcycle courses, you know, things that are kind of labyrinthine. And I liked M.C. Escher and optical illusions and stuff like that. So I was very inclined towards that as a child. I don’t think I saw a labyrinth, and certainly didn’t know what one was, until even after college, I think.
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