Bob Rollings

Statement

My interest in geometry stems from a lifetime spent in the cabinet making industry. Initially I worked as a hands on craftsman and later in a supervisory position which comprised of interpreting designer/architectural concepts and turning them into practical and beautiful pieces. After my retirement, I turned my interest in geometry into a hobby using wood as a medium. My investigation and interpretation of the platonic solids has been influenced by Johannes Kepler, Luca Pacioli, Leonardo Da Vinci, M.C. Escher and later by Buckminster Fuller and Donald Coxeter. After exhibiting some of my work at the Fields Institute, I was invited to share space in Donald Coxeter’s showcase in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Toronto. Using a lathe as my primary tool gives me a more individualistic approach to the study and presentation of various geometric forms.

Artworks

My wood sculpture has been inspired by the work of Charles Perry and C.H. Sequin. It is five by five by eleven inches high. The wood is babinga and it is lathe turned by hand and is based on a streptohedron.

The wood used in this sculpture is burled maple. It is made from three rings, three quarter inch in section and five inch diameter. These rings were divided, rotated and then reassembled to make this a three dimensional continuous ribbon.

This group of five platonic solids shown here are of different sizes but their vertices lie on the surfaces of spheres that are approximately four to six inches in diameter. They are made from various species of wood which have been laminated together to create the individual designs achieving the edge matching required.