Adrian Fisher

Adrian Fisher (born August 5, 1951 ) is a British designer of mazes and paving mosaics and a book author. So far, his work comprises around 500 objects in 30 countries.

Live and act

Adrian Fisher is the son of James Frederick Fisher and Rosemary Sterling-Hill. After attending school and training in Portsmouth, he began his professional career as a management consultant. Together with Randoll Coate , he founded Minotaur Designs in 1979 , which was dedicated to the design and construction of mazes and paving labyrinths.

Fisher's first maze was a small, holly-planted compound on private property in Bournemouth . This was followed in 1980 by the Archbishop's Maze (" Archbishop's Maze "), a lawn maze in Grey's Court, which was dedicated to Robert Runcie on the occasion of his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury . Fisher became famous for the Beatles' Maze , created in 1984 for the International Gardens Festival in Liverpool , a system in the form of a pond with an apple-shaped floor plan and stepping stones, at the center of which was an 18-ton, 15.5-meter-long sculpture of the Yellow Submarine .

In 1983 Fisher founded his second company, Adrian Fisher Mazes Ltd. He achieved further artistic recognition in 1984 through his participation in the Bath Festival of Arts , where he created a modern form of the lawn maze with the Beazer Gardens Maze . In 1986 he invented a new form of the maze , the "mathematical maze". This is a system designed as a paving labyrinth that, in addition to geometric shapes, also introduces colors that enable the solution according to certain rules.

In 1993, Fisher developed the first corn maze (word game maize maze ). It was a temporary maze in Pennsylvania with an area of ​​more than an acre, the system of paths depicting a stylized stegosaurus . Numerous systems of this type followed, the areas of which were further increased.

Fisher has been awarded several designer awards and a gold medal as an International Garden Designer . There are six entries in the Guinness Book of Records . Fisher works in the European office of the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA), an organization of developers, designers and builders of themed objects such as museums and theme parks. He is a guild member of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners of London . In 2008, Fisher founded Adrian Fisher Design Ltd.

Adrian Fisher was married to Dorothy Jane Pollard from 1975 to 1996. In 1997 he married Marie Ann Butterworth. He lives in Durweston, Dorset . Fisher has two daughters from a first marriage and a son from a second marriage.

Works

In addition to hedge mazes, Fisher's work also includes lawn mazes and paving mosaics with labyrinthine or maze-like patterns. His early works can mainly be found in Great Britain, now systems based on his designs exist in many countries around the world. In Germany, his works can be seen in the Sea Life Center in Berlin and in the Hamburg Dungeon , both of which are mirror labyrinths .

Many of Fisher's hedge mazes do not tie in with the traditional, formal, geometric design of such systems, but instead show symbolic shapes in a new design that are recognizable as super characters from a bird's eye view and have land art characteristics.

Hedge mazes

• Newquay Zoo (Cornwall): Dragon , a maze with the plan of a stylized dragon (1984, with Randoll Coate)
• Blenheim Palace : Marlborough Maze , large symbolic maze on the theme of the Battle of Blenheim (1988–1991, together with Randoll Coate)
• Maidstone (Kent): Leeds Castle , a square complex with a viewing hill, a grotto and an underground exit (1986–1988, with Vernon Gibberd and Randoll Coate)
• Windsor (Berkshire): Legoland , Celtic Maze and Tudor Maze (1996, with Rodney Beaumont of Gillespies)
• Perth (Scotland): Scone Palace , symbolic complex in the form of a pentagonal star, the coat of arms of the Murray family
• Blessington (County Wicklow, Ireland): Russborough Maze , square system with the appearance of a diamond , with a Cupid statue at the finish (with Randoll Coate)
• Merritown House (Dorset): Alice-in-Wonderland-Maze , a regular octagon to the literary figure (1992, with Randoll Coate)
• Vaalserberg (Limburg): Drielandenpunt , system in the form of a coat of arms with motifs of the neighboring countries, three bridges (1991/1992)

Lawn and paving mazes

• West Palm Beach (Florida, USA): Norton Museum of Art, Theseus Slaying the Minotaur , rectangular floor mosaic with (inaccessible) maze pattern (1977)
• Henley-on-Thames (Oxfordshire): Grays Court, Archbishop's Maze , red brick paths in lawn, seven whorls, center with sundial (1981)
• Bath (Somerset): Beazer Gardens, elliptical lawn maze, seven whorls, center with mosaic (1984)
• Long Melford (Suffolk): Kentwell Hall, Tudor Rose Maze , cobblestone maze in the courtyard, a Tudor rose in red and white (1985, with Randoll Coate)
• Wyck Rissington Church (Gloucestershire): Maze of the Mysteries of the Gospels , wall mosaic after a destroyed hedge maze of the clergyman Harry Cheales (1988)
• Leicester: Mathematical Color Maze , brick-paved outdoor area at the Mathematics Building of the University of Leicester (1991)

Mirror mazes

• London Dungeon
• Longleat House

Fonts

• Adrian Fisher, Georg Gerster: The Art of the Maze. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1990, ISBN 0-297-83027-9 .
• Adrian Fisher, Howard Loxton: Secret of the Labyrinth. an interactive guide to the most fascinating mazes in the world. Translated from the English by Karl Friedrich Hörner. AT, Aarau 1998, ISBN 3-85502-640-8 .
• Labyrinths and mazes. The big play and adventure book. Translated from the English by Anna-Christine Rassmann and Angela Schumitz. AT, Berlin, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-03-800298-4 .

classification

With most of his works, Fisher tied in with the revival of the labyrinthine theme, as in the second half of the 20th century by Michael Ayrton and a little later Randoll Coate, who created the first symbolic hedge maze in Lechlade Mill, in different ways took place. In contrast to Ayrton's approach, which initiated the new beginning, and the working methods of contemporary artists such as Alice Aycock , Elaine M. Goodwin, and Maggie Berkowitz, Fisher concentrated on building popular mazes, the themes of which allowed ever new variations. Fisher's mosaic depictions are often devoted to the original Minotaur theme.

Fisher's large hedge mazes, in particular, primarily follow the requirements of amusement and theme parks. In accordance with the high number of visitors, these facilities are laid out with wide paths and without dead ends that could disappoint the visitors. Furthermore, the visitor is often entertained by interactive elements such as doors or surprise fountains. Bridges and large viewing platforms round off Fisher's hedges. His labyrinthine creations differ from the more historically oriented individual works by Dennis Fisher ( Chatsworth , 1962, not related to Adrian Fisher), Piet Hein ( Egeskov Slot , 1986) or Thomas Michael Bauermeister ( Berlin-Marzahn , 2005-2007)

literature

• Robert Field: Mazes, ancient and modern. Dissertation. Tarquin Publications, Norfolk 1999, ISBN 1899618295 , pp. 58-61.
• Who's who 2008. An annual biographical dictionary. 116th year. A & C Black: London 2007. ISBN 978-0-71368555-8 , pp. 768-769.

Web links

• Literature by and about Adrian Fisher in the catalog of the German National Library
• Adrian Fisher Design website