George Hart
I envision and construct intricate multi-part structures that
interconnect within themselves in complex ways. I get satisfaction
from visualizing and working on multiple levels: from small components
to larger modules to the complete big picture. An imagined structural
graph encapsulates the many inter-relationships. In this respect, I
believe this artistic satisfaction is exactly what any mathematician
feels when solving a problem, discovering a proof, or generally
bringing logical clarity to something initially baffling. In effect, I
pose challenges for myself and present just the solutions, leaving
viewers to examine each sculpture and speculate as to what the
question is.
Dancing Lobsters is a symmetric assemblage of sixty identical
pieces of 6mm-thick laser-cut Baltic birch plywood. The piece
shape was carefully calculated to swirl around neighboring pieces
while connecting to four others in order to make a rigid
construction. It is stained a turquoise blue on the outside and a
pale blue on the inside. The sixty components may be seen as a
physical representation of the icosahedral rotation group (A5)
with any piece arbitrarily chosen to represent the identity.