Caroline Bowen
I am an artist who graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with a double major in math and academic physics with a minor in studio art. The goal of my work is to create sculptures that function as concrete, tangible illustrations of abstract, cerebral ideas in both of these subjects, motivated by a desire to solidify my own understanding in my studies and to share what I find with others. I am interested in addressing as much of the undergraduate math and physics curricula as I can using a wide variety of media. At the time of submission, I have been primarily working in cut paper and am beginning to work in plastic fabrication techniques for acrylic.
"Asterism" is a sculpture depicting the seven stars of the Big Dipper as they actually appear in space, though not to scale. When viewed head-on from the front (designated by the marker on the top left corner of the frame), the stars form the Big Dipper as it appears from here on earth, but as the viewer walks around it and his or her perspective changes, the stars appear to dissolve into a seemingly random 3D configuration. This work is largely an exercise in plotting 3D points through sculptural means: the stars were first plotted in 3D in GeoGebra, the cube drawn around them, and line segments were drawn in connecting edges of the cube and intersecting the stars. The measurements for construction were then taken from this model.