Hamp Stevens
Artists
Statement
I am a mathmatical artist who builds spherical polyhedra. I work in Paper, Plastic, Wood and Steel. This work is very exacting and hard to do. All the work requires very persice calculations, measurement and set ups. it requies and intimate knowledge of wood and metal working and wood turning.
Artworks
Spherical Pentagonal Hexecontahedron made from PVC. This work was inspired by George Harts, schulptue "Whimsey" and by Daniel Suttin, who built one frrom Paper. The from is also being used as geodesdic domes for Amazon.com's new headquarters in Seattle. This object is the Dual of a Snub Dodecahedron. It requires very precise mitering of the edges.The basic forms were cut with a CNC drive router. Once cut, the edges had to all be mitered on a table saw to an angle of 13.4106 deg. This is very difficult to do and keep all sides of the irregular pentagon in the correct proportion.
This is a Spherical Rhombicosidodecahedron made from Wood. It is 14" in dia. and has a wall thickness of 5/8". This object starts life as a geometric shape and is put in a wood lathe and spun into a sphere. This work was inspired by Robert Webbs computer program "Stella 4-D". The work is an excerised in exactness. It requires milling of the components to a tollerance of +/- 0.005. The miters have to be exact and the edge lengths exacly the same. Once constructed it must be put in a wood lathe and spun down to form a sphere. This is difficult and exacting.
This is spherical Rhombicosidodecaheron made from Arc bands of stainless steel and bolted tegether. This inspiration for this work was Fr. Mangus Wenninger's book "Spherical Models". The work requires very exact cutting or the arcs and exact positioning of the bolt holes. Given the size of the individual components it is extremly difficult to assemble. It contains 1280 individual bolts.