Martin Levin
I received a Ph.D. in mathematics from Johns Hopkins. For most of my
career I taught high school math in Waldorf schools, where the
pedagogy encourages the bridging of mathematics and art. I'm now
retired. The Platonic solids are quite simple geometric forms, and
yet, as one contemplates them and builds up and holds the forms in
one’s imagination, they become quite captivating. The center point has
a polar plane (in the sense of projective geometry), which is the
plane at infinity. One can imagine the form carved out by planes and
lines coming in from the infinitely distant periphery. The model shown
here is designed to suggest shapes that are not solid blocks, but
rather created by lines and planes coming from the periphery.
The compound of five tetrahedra has long fascinated me. Here, the
stainless steel tubes form five tetrahedra with right hand
orientation. They are suspended from one another by wires. The
wires themselves form five more tetrahedra that are the mirror
image of the first five. Altogether these are the ten tetrahedra
that can be inscribed in a dodecahedron. The wires pass through
holes in the tubes without touching, thereby making it a true
tensegrity figure. Thanks to careful mathematical calculations, I
was able to precision machine this piece entirely in stainless
steel, allowing it to maintain its beauty in an outdoor setting.