Bjarne Jespersen

Statement

I use creative geometry to bring new life to old traditions of "magic woodcarving", i.e. the art of carving a piece of wood into parts that are loose, but cannot be separated. Traditional examples are wooden chains and balls in cages, as seen in such items as Welsh love spoons and European wool winders.

Artworks

A compound of four trefoil knots oriented as the faces of a tetrahedron. Its symmetry is that of the tetrahedron, but without mirror reflections.

The traditional ball in cage theme is combined with a classical motif from renaissance art and inspiration from Japanese netsuke carvings. The cage is a rhombic dodecahedral edge frame.

Two cubic edge frames are tied together with a half twist to each pair of edges, then reshaped to resemble Keplar's Stelle Octangula, the well known compound of two regular tetrahedra.