Owen "OAT" Rohm
Artists
Statement
Hello! My name is Owen Rohm, but you can call me “OAT”. I am a 20 year old industrial design student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve always hung around a bunch of artists, to whom I seem a total nerd, and a bunch of total nerds who find me unbearably artsy (A duality I’m sure is foreign to all of you at the Bridges art/math conference). The perfect project to me is one that seems wildly silly, provides some value in people’s lives, is sustainably produced, and incorporates some beautiful aspect of mathematics. I find inspiration in a very diverse set of places, and every year Bridges is one of them! Please reach out, I’d love to talk about anything!
Artworks
A Puzzle for Nana
2-Tone Acrylic, Chipboard
2020
My grandmother (Nana) is a connoisseur of puzzles. Her collection is vast and impressive. Watching her sort pieces and systematically complete a puzzle is akin to watching a master sushi chef deftly fillet a fugu fish.
The problem is, there are only so many puzzles out there.
As such, I set out to make a puzzle based on a Truchet tiling that could be done differently each time with the same set of pieces. After designing some tile shapes and patterns which could fit together regardless of how they were rotated, I laser cut them out of acrylic. With 7 different types of piece, some of which with multiple options for rotations, and an 11x15 grid, there are at least… uh… a lot of different combinations for puzzles! (9.64 * 10^24ish)