Vivian Wang
Artists
Statement
As both a math-lover and artist, I am curious about geometry, color, and symmetry. I enjoy learning and playing around with different art forms and their applications to the realm of mathematical artwork. Most recently, I have been interested in designing and creating beaded polyhedral pieces, due to the versatility of the technique in forming various three-dimensional geometric structures and the puzzle-like challenge of constructing such pieces.
Artworks
Progression of Goldberg Polyhedra
7 x 24 x 13 cm
11/0 seed beads, monofilament cord
2016
I angle-weaved a series of 11 Goldberg polyhedra, using beads to represent edges. Each polyhedron contains 12 pentagons, the remainder of the faces being hexagons. These polyhedra also represent the structure of icosahedral viral capsids. The first 10 polyhedra of this series represent capsids with triangulation numbers T=1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, 16, 19, 21. A T-number of 1 corresponds to a simple dodecahedron with (h,k) parameter (1,0). The coloring patterns of the capsid models are inspired by the lateral mechanical stress distribution data published in "Mechanical properties of viral capsids" by Zandi & Reguera in Phys. Rev. E (2005). The multicolored 11th polyhedron is the G(4,4) polyhedron with 1440 edges or beads.