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Inspired by Nature's Minimal Surfaces...
"Cube-Volution-5" (June 2009) - Bronze, 2 patinas, 6" x 6" x 6". Soap films spanning arbitrary bent wire-frames take on a smooth shape with nicely ballanced saddle surfaces. In eqiulibrium, the mean curvature at every point of such a surface is zero, since positive and negative curvatures exactly cancel out. Such surfaces also minimize the amount of surface area needed to span the wire frame; they are thus called "minimal" surfaces. In this sculptures a minimal surface with two tunnels has been formed in a boundary composed of 12 quarter circle arcs. |
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Inspired by Celestial Events...
"Aurora Australis" (February 2010) - Bronze, 16" tall. When high-energy particles from the sun hit the earth's ionosphere, wonderful light displays can result; near the Southern pole they are known as Aurora Australis. Often they look like undulating ribbons or curtains. Such images have inspired this sculpture, which is an undulating Moebius band that changes its shape from flat to curved and back. |
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Inspired by Astronomy...
"Solar Circle" (December 2003) - Bronze, 12" diam. This is a toroidal ring formed by a chain of twelve 4-way saddles. The whole loop thus consists of 12 "houses" reminiscent of the 12 astrological signs of the zodiac. The sun moves to a new house every month. |
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Inspired by Knot-Theory...
"Torus Knot (5,3)" (May 2010) - Bronze, 16" tall. Torus knots of type (p,q) are simple knots that wind around an invisible donut in a regular manner -- p times around the hole, and q times through the hole. By using a somewhat more angular shape for the donut and a crescent-shaped cross section for the ribbon, this mathematical construct can be turned into a constructivist sculpture. |
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Inspired by the Geometry of Space-filling Curves...
"Hilbert_512_3D" (July 2005) - Stainless Steel and Bronze, 5" x 5" x 5". Space-filling curves are recursive, self-similar pathways, which, after sufficiently many recursive iterations, fill a given area with a uniform density. A famous curve of this type is the Hilbert curve, which fills the inside of a square. With this sculpture, the basic idea has been taken into the 3rd dimension to make a self-similar curve that fills a cube volume. |
