Eve Torrence

Professor of Mathematics
Randolph-Macon College
Ashland, Virginia, USA

I love the symmetric beauty of polyhedra and enjoy using paper to create models to study. Through the process of creating a model I am able to truly understand its structure.

This work was inspired by a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii and glass artist Daniel Moe’s (www.moehotglass.com) sculptures of flowing lava. Pahoehoe is a form of lava that often forms ropey parallel ridges with a smooth surface when it cools. I used the structure of this polyhedron to portray a lava flow with a hardened surface and molten core breaking through.

Pahoehoe
Pahoehoe
42 x 42 x 42 cm
Card Stock
2016

This sculpture is made from 120 hypars. A hypar is an origami structure that approximates a hyperbolic paraboloid. The hypars were folded from rhombi with diagonals with ratio 26:31. Pairs of hypars, one black and one orange, were glued together to form a shape with 4 edges that lie on a rhombus. The diagonals of these rhombi have the ratio 1:φ, where φ is the golden ratio. The pairs of hypars are then arranged in the configuration of a rhombic hexecontahedron, a nonconvex polyhedron with 60 rhombic faces, each with golden ratio proportions.