Beading all the angles

My work explores complex polyhedral structures and polygon formations stitched with beads and thread.My repertoire includes classic geometric forms, whole, and partial frame polyhedra, regular tilings, and tessellations. I connect the component forms at contiguous polygonal faces and edges to create chains, sculptural polyhedra, and tilings. The open networks of tilings and frame polyhedra provide a magical space for light to play with crystal and glass beads. Recently I have been exploringmore complex structures using dodecahedra asmymain building blocks. I have found that I can make rhombus forms, hexagons, rectangles, sixpointed stars, and squares. The flexibility of the thread I use in my beadwork allows me to connect a line of dodecahedra in a circle. However, this is a distortion of a circle rather than a perfect circle. With my piece ‘Dodecahedron Hexagon Suite’ (see Figure 1). I have begun to construct more andmore complex patterns, which combine these five forms. The challenge inmaking these forms is finding the appropriate pentagonal faces on each dodecahedron and determining how to connect them to create other complex forms. The various constructions depend on differing combinations of odd or evennumbers of dodecahedra. A dodecahedron consists of twelve equilateral pentagons. It can be solid with planar faces or open-framework.When I look at a dodecahedron I also see six pairs of pentagonal frames or faces. Each of these six pairs sit directly opposite each other on the dodecahedron. The orientation of these two opposite pentagonal faces is different. When I join two dodecahedra, the planar faces at each endof the new formare now the sameorientation.My exploration into dodecahedral constructions revolves around these changing orientations. My artmaking tools are thread and beads. I use a large variety of threads frommonofilament, to micro fishing line, Nymo thread (a shoemaker’s thread), and quilting thread. I think of the malleability and flexibility of thread as an important ‘factor’ in my work. My other geometric explorations involve patterns transforming polyhedra. These operations involve adjusting the edges ofmy open frame polyhedra by varying the size or length of beads used. These transformations form new shapes without changing the number of sides of the polyhedron. The transformations do however force some different angle orientations in the structures. I also strive to create as many colour combinations of bead edges as possible.