2020 Joint Mathematics Meetings
Aaron Yu
Artists
Aaron Yu
High School Student
Proof School
Moraga, California, USA
Statement
As an aspiring mathematician, I tinker with origami as a method to explore my interests in mathematics. My fascination with origami has only grown since I began folding at age six. I became drawn to the mathematical side of origami through tessellations and I started creating my own origami tessellations a few years ago. This is the most complex piece I’ve created to date, bridging the gap between classic 2D tessellations and the tangible 3D world.
Artworks
pyramidal Hexagonal mosaic
26 x 32 x 2 cm
56 x 80 cm Lavender Granite Paper
2019
The title of the piece, pyramidal Hexagonal mosaic, has an embedded meaning. Taking hexagonal to mean 6, it can be abbreviated as p6m, and this tessellation has type p6m. Rabbit-ear triangle sink-folds in the well-known Stacked Triangles tessellation were my inspiration for this piece. I had never seen a tessellation that used this unique fold before and I wanted to create something that incorporated this with other techniques, as well as exploring the third dimension. I accomplished this by drawing inspiration from the classic origami balloon, and applying it to the rabbit-ear triangle sink-folds to pop them up into the small square pyramids present on the surface.