Debora Coombs

This sculpture is built from 837 identical hand-cut mirrored tiles. The sculpture is a Penrose tiling by rhombs raised into the 3rd dimension. This tiling pattern is understood by mathematicians to be a projection of a plane that slices through a lattice of 5D cubes.The sculpture’s geometry is characterized by the golden ratio, which occurs frequently in nature. Each diamond-shaped tile is a golden rhombus slanted at an angle that corresponds to a cube in five dimensions. Quasi-crystalline materials do not form naturally on Earth but have been found in meteorites. Their discovery continues my drive toward figuring out how quasicrystals grow in nature. The viewer of this sculpture cannot easily see their own reflection, or that of another standing nearby. Walking around the sculpture, rotating it, or shifting point of view will reveal unexpected sightings. These broken reflections, flickering in and out of view, demonstrate a real-time connection between observer and observed.