2023 Bridges Conference Art Exhibition

Ellie Baker

Artists

Ellie Baker

Artist and Computer Scientist

Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

ellie.baker@post.harvard.edu

https://www.ellie-baker.com

Statement

I'm drawn to crafting objects whose construction requires puzzle-solving. In pursuit of design goals, I often stumble across fun puzzles and wind up not only with an interesting object, but also with a deeper understanding of some bit of mathematics. My experiences as a maker/crafter/artist/puzzler are also reflected in the book I coauthored with Susan Goldstine, “Crafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist." A paper, coauthored with Charles Wampler and Daniel Baker, about how to sew the toroidal scarf depicted below, titled "Triply invertible scarf sewing adventures (and instructions)," will be published in the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts special issue on Fiber Arts in 2023.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Inside Story'

Inside Story

35.0 x 28.0 cm

Colored pencil on paper

2023

Additional info

A whimsical montage of my experimental process designing and puzzling out a particular mathematical art object: a toroidal scarf that reverses three ways. This collection of images was a way to gather and savor aspects of the creative process that I found beautiful, compelling, amusing, or fun. Included are: (above) a graphical proof that a fully nested configuration won’t reverse to expose three different surfaces; (front) a depiction of linked fabric experiments, each with an X-ray vision drawing of what happens inside when one torus in the link is inverted; and (left) an image of the scarf’s two-sided inversion slit, juxtaposed with (right) a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. The text is from the abstract of a technical paper about the scarf.