Creating works of art inspired by mathematical results is a robust area of intersection in the world of Math & Art. Each year, artists and mathematicians come together from all over the world to celebrate the interplay between mathematics and art at the Bridges Math & Art conference. You can see many lovely mathematical works of art in the Exhibition Archive.
I enjoy creating art inspired by the papers I have written. This is the page where you can see them!
Hitomezashi Wallpaper Triptych, 47.0 x 38.0 cm, Sashiko thread on cotton/linen fabric, 2024
I displayed this work in the Bridges 2024 Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design. This wall-hanging triptych explores the 9 wallpaper symmetries that can appear in generalized hitomezashi patterns that are generated by two binary strings. These designs are hand-stitched on a grid, where separate threads form the horizontal and vertical lines in a running stitch; the only decision for each horizontal and vertical line is whether to begin the thread above or below the fabric (and this corresponds to the “0” or “1” in a binary string). One of the beautiful features of this form of sashiko is that the back of the design is just as lovely as the front. To celebrate this duality, these wallhangings are completely reversible, and I encourage viewers to turn them over on the wall to view them on whichever side they desire!
You can see more views of these embroidery panels here.
A Functional Family, 28.0 x 43.0 x 30.0 cm, Wool Yarn, Polyester Fiber Fill, Wire, Safety Eyes & Buttons, Duct Tape, 2023
I created this work with Amanda Lipnicki Taylor and we displayed it in the 2023 Bridges Conference Art Exhibition.
Boo, NB, Yves, Felicia, and Clint aren’t your typical family. Their forms were born from hundreds of hours of work by the artists on a program that automates the creation of crochet patterns for surfaces of revolution. The program intakes a positive differentiable function, x-bounds, a scale, and row and stitch gauges; from these, it outputs a pattern to crochet the associated surface of revolution. The program uses arclength integrals to create landmarks for row placement. A variant of the Hausdorff metric and modulus calculations are used to place increases and decreases within the rows. Details about this program can be found in the paper, Automating Crochet Patterns for Surfaces of Revolution.
More information about the functions used to construct the characters of this family can be found here.
