Laurel Shastri

Statement

At the pandemic's beginning, I found myself in lockdown, without work, wanting to maintain a level of active creativity in my mind and body. During my morning warm-up routine, I continually found myself at eye-level with one of my husband's many math books, 'On Quaternions and Octonions' by John H. Conway and Derek A. Smith. The word OCTONION kept catching my eye and knocking about in my brain. OCT-Onion, OCTO-nion, OC-Tonion. Images of onions, octopuses, and mysterious mathematics danced in my mind's eye. After I wrote a note to my husband, laying out 6 onions on the kitchen counter and telling him that we were two onions short of an OCT-onion, he took it upon himself to tell me more about these 8 dimensional numbers. This is the result.

Artworks

The octonion is a myth-a-matical 8-dimensional creature. From one point of view, it resembles an onion. From another perspective, it appears more like an octopus. From yet a third angle, it appears as a mysterious, unusual creature. More perspectives are bound to exist due to its multidimensional nature; these are merely the ones I've discovered so far. Note the 'square roots.' They are tiny versions of the larger octonion. While there is not an infinite number of them attached on this representation, it did feel like an infinity during the creation process. Credits: Conversations with Karl Schaffer Rescaled and modified Octopus pattern by Quirkshop Designs Fabric rescued from landfill by Fabmo