Bronna Butler
My early interest in art and mathematics led to careers in both
finance and art. For the past decade, I have been creating
multifaceted glass-and-metal sculptures and two-dimensional imagery
focused on recreational mathematics, mathematics, physics, and science
in general. My work incorporates puzzles, enigmas, optical illusions,
and mathematics outreach whenever possible. Using Baroque and
Renaissance painting techniques, I paint glass, oil, and pastel
artworks by building up thin layers of color. Like those two art
periods, I also employ the science of the arts such as the chemistry
of paints and materials, precise anatomy, perspective, and
mathematical content.
To create a Sierpiński triangle, at each stage you remove
triangles from the current shape. But to create a Sierpiński
tetrahedron you don’t remove tetrahedra: instead, you remove
octahedra! This sculpture shows the complement of the second
iteration of a Sierpiński tetrahedron; the complement consists of
a central octahedron, surrounded by four smaller octahedra. The
full-antique blue glass triangles are actually in the complement,
while the color-shifting micro-metal-layered dichroic glass
triangles are not. The interior of the sculpture is entirely
contained in the complement.