Bronna Butler

Statement

My early interest in art and mathematics led to careers in both finance and art. For the past decade, I have been creating multifaceted glass-and-metal sculptures and two-dimensional imagery focused on recreational mathematics, mathematics, physics, and science in general. My work incorporates puzzles, enigmas, optical illusions, and mathematics outreach whenever possible. Using Baroque and Renaissance painting techniques, I paint glass, oil, and pastel artworks by building up thin layers of color. Like those two art periods, I also employ the science of the arts such as the chemistry of paints and materials, precise anatomy, perspective, and mathematical content.

Artworks

To create a Sierpiński triangle, at each stage you remove triangles from the current shape. But to create a Sierpiński tetrahedron you don’t remove tetrahedra: instead, you remove octahedra! This sculpture shows the complement of the second iteration of a Sierpiński tetrahedron; the complement consists of a central octahedron, surrounded by four smaller octahedra. The full-antique blue glass triangles are actually in the complement, while the color-shifting micro-metal-layered dichroic glass triangles are not. The interior of the sculpture is entirely contained in the complement.