Forms inspired by mathematics and nature

Mathematical structure is evident throughout the natural world. My work explores the mathematics of symmetry, fractals, tessellations and more, blending it with plant and animal forms as well as inorganic forms found in nature. This synthesis allows me to create innovative prints and sculptures that derive their appeal from a combination of complexity and underlying order. My formal education centred on science, but I’ve had a lifelong interest in art. I took private art lessons beginning around age eight and continuing through high school, where I progressed from charcoal drawing to pastels, oil pastels, oil painting and acrylic painting. In college I majored in Physics, adding Mathematics as a second major in my junior year. I went on to earn a PhD in Electrical Engineering. During my graduate-school years in upstate New York, I developed a love of trees that was to influence my later mathematical art. Living inArizona for the last quarter-century, theAmerican Southwest has had a strong influence on my art both through plant forms like cacti and carved and eroded sandstone forms, particularly those of slot canyons. My art first turned explicitly mathematical after graduate school, when I was working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. I started trying to design my own Eschersque tessellations. I can’t recall when I first became aware of Escher’s art, but I remember having a couple of posters of his work in my freshman dorm room. With practice, I gradually acquired the ability to produce original Escheresque tessellations that I thought were worth making into prints. To learn printmaking techniques I took classes in block printing and screen printing. I also took stained glass, graphic design, and interior design courses. I developed an interest in architecture around the same time, and I toured several notable homes in the Los Angeles area by Greene and Greene, Frank Lloyd Wright and other Craftsman and modern architects. I gained an appreciation of Japanese woodcuts through their influence on these architects, with their attention to the balance and grace of a composition and the beauty of nature. Most of the mathematics I learned in school wasn’t particularly visual. The mathematical topics that play a central role in my art, tessellations, fractals, hyperbolic geometry, and polyhedra are things I learned about through math-art conferences and my own reading. The first conference of this sort I attendedwas one spearheaded byNat Friedman inAlbany,