Audrey Nasar
Artists
Audrey Nasar
Assistant Professor of Mathematics
The Fashion Institute of Technology
New York City, NY, USA
Statement
I am a mathematics professor, illustrator, and an occasional ceramicist. A recent exploration in the mathematics of mazes as described by Anthony Phillips, inspired me to apply the technique of sgraffito to create simple alternating mazes. In sgraffito, the clay is painted with an underglaze which is then scratched off to reveal the clay underneath before going into the kiln.
Artworks
Simple Alternating Mazes
9 x 9 x 1 cm
Clay and Underglaze
2022
Each maze shown can be described by its level sequence, which is the sequence obtained by numbering the levels in the maze, starting with 0 on the outside and 8 on the inside, and then recording the sequence of levels traveled along the path from the outside to the inside. Of the 42 possible level 8 mazes, 4 are depicted here. They have level sequences 072543618, 032147658, 034567218, and 016345278 (clockwise starting with the top left maze). Some of the level sequences are symmetric in that if each number n in the sequence is replaced by 8-n, the sequence reads the same backwards.