Bronna Butler
My artwork incorporates two of my passions, art and mathematics. My early interest in both resulted in two rotating careers, one in art and another in finance/science. I create multifaceted glass/metal sculptures and two-dimensional imagery focused on recreational mathematics, mathematicians and physicists, and science in general. My work embraces puzzles, enigmas and optical illusions whenever possible. Using Baroque and Renaissance painting techniques, my glass, oil and pastel artworks are painted with thin layers of color. Like these two periods, I am also involved in the “science” of the arts such as the chemistry of paints/materials, precise anatomy, perspective, and mathematical content.
Mathematicians Jayadev Athreya, David Aulicino and Patrick Hooper recently proved that there are an infinite number of straight paths on the dodecahedron that start at one vertex, proceed in a straight path around the Platonic solid, returning to the starting vertex without passing through any other vertices. Mathematician Ingrid Daubechies introduced me to this breakthrough during our collaboration with 23 other mathematicians and artists on a math/art installation, Mathemalchemy (https://youtu.be/jvni0N3Khcw, www.mathemalchemy.org). I illustrated one of the straight paths using the stained-glass dodecahedron that I created for the installation. Crimson glass was used for the area below the straight path and amber glass for the area above.