Gabriele Meyer
Artists
Gabriele Meyer
Senior Lecturer Emerita
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Statement
For the past 10 years I have crocheted hyperbolic surfaces. This activity is relaxing and yet challenges my mind to imagine how this mathematically simple structure can enhance our lives and how it's used by nature. More recently I tried to make the shapes more transparent, i.e. with holes and yet keep them stable as they curve in three dimensions. The idea is to crochet back and forth at an angle to the main crochet direction on the back of the surface. I also made another hyperbolic triangle, this one in red and shades of pink, white and yellow.
Artworks
Red and yellow triangle
195 x 42 x 42 cm
yarn and plastic line
2018
This object is a hyperbolic triangle. It is crocheted like a hyperbolic disc in a spiral fashion around what is in essence a triangle with a rounded top. I added an additional 17 stitches to the long tail, every second row. At the top and the bottom I changed the color scheme.
White Algae
242 x 42 x 42 cm
yarn and plastic line
2017
This algae was started at the Waterloo Bridges in 2017 and was finished about three months later. The idea was to create a long, undulating hyperbolic surface, that could have lighting filaments woven through the holes in the crochet. To preserve stability, I crocheted a "sine" curve on the back of the hyperbolic band, reinforced by plastic line. This works. The otherwise not very stable crochet does not deform (not much anyway...).
You can see the sine curve at the back appearing as the darker curve behind the crochet of the surface.
It provides structural support.