This past February, I joined a group of artists, mathematicians, and mathematician-artists collaborating on a math-art installation with layer upon layer upon layer of mathematical and artistic thought, narrative, punning, and play. For me, during this summer of covid, it's been an opportunity both to get to know a bunch of really interesting, dedicated, talented, creative people and to explore new objets d'clay. I've prototyped herons and hagfish-inspired Fibonacci sea serpents for a Knotical scene, tortoise shells decorated with pentagonal and heptagonal tilings of the hyperbolic plane, and clay heads for an industrious feline baker of tessellating cookies, with more creatures coming soon. These seeds are stimulating adventures for me outside of the project too. The first heron prototypes, for example, flew off to the Sculpture in the Garden show at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, and successive generations rounded out a recent Claymakers Zoom class on wheel-thrown and altered birds and beasts.
The math-art project now has a website--mathemalchemy.org--and released a teaser trailer this past week. Check it out!
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| Penguins meet Fibonacci serpent |
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| Tessellating shell for Tess the tortoise |
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| First batch of heads that looked more feline than kangarooine or chipmunkine. Still working on it... |
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| Juvenile wheel-thrown heron; the adults are taller and have metal legs. |
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