richard kallweit
artist
bethany, ct usa
My artworks are based on investigations into mathematical form concerning the arrangements of units in space. Cubic packing,tesselations,symmetry,and growth patterns are some the ideas I've been working with.
These works were developed over long periods of time using these mathematical ideas and some of my own device . The main struggle is to get them to work in the old fashioned sense of beauty, harmony and finish ( or lack of ).
The paintings and structures are sometimes based on such rigid systems they oft feels as if they create themselves as natural phenomena from logical sequence.
This approach has entailed difficulties in that the balance between experiment,research and art is never strictly defined..
minimal surface triacontahedron (I think) with infinite pentagonal regression
10 in.x 10 in. x 10 in.
offset print , paper
2011
This work consists of two interrelated but separate ideas. There is the polyhedra based on the triacontahedron of 30 faces with a minimal surface and the surface itself with its infinite regression star pattern with its 4 colors.
I used the 72 degree lozenge shape from the star pentagon (the purple diamond) and with 30 of these constructed the polyhedra. The concavity of the surface resulted from forcing the pieces together.
Triacontahedron with star pattern
12 "x 12 " x12"
paper with off set printing
2010
Polyhedron with star pattern is a work resulting from the accumulation of many processes. The faces are formed from thirty diamond shapes of the pentagonal lattice. The surface star pattern was derived from pentagonal units added together; mechanically reduced; added together and reduced again. The construction of the piece is also to be considered part of the piece itself.
NEGATIVE / POSITIVE intersecting tetrahedra
5" x5" x5" and 5" x5" x5"
wood paint
2009
These two pieces need to be counted as one work in that they demonstrate the fusion of two tetrahedra. Here 4 cubes are joined on edge to form a tetrahedron then 4 joined again in a fractal system. The second set is the negative of the first. I later found that similar work has an antecedent in the French priest mathematician Rene Hauy in 1801 . With just some playful joining of cubes I have chanced upon some interesting shapes and ideas.