2024 Joint Mathematics Meetings

Susan Goldstine

Artists

Susan Goldstine

Professor of Mathematics

St. Mary's College of Maryland

St. Mary's City, Maryland, USA

sgoldstine@smcm.edu

http://faculty.smcm.edu/sgoldstine/gallery/mathart.html

Statement

There are two things I have done for as long as I can remember: explore mathematics, and create things with my hands. In my professional academic life, these impulses have merged into my specialization in mathematics and the arts. I am particularly devoted to exploring handcrafts, especially those in the fiber arts traditionally viewed as feminine. The interplay between mathematics and fiber arts is endlessly fascinating, both in the ways that mathematics allows for a deeper understanding of knitting, crochet, weaving, and so forth, and in the ways that these crafts can illuminate complex concepts in mathematics.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Uniform Syncopation'

Uniform Syncopation

45.0 x 25.0 x 25.0 cm

Merino/cotton yarn, topstitching thread, copper wire

2023

Additional info

In two-color brioche, an increase, where one stitch turns into two or more, forms a branching of the main color. Knitting pieces of the hyperbolic plane in brioche allows us to see how irregularly the increases are distributed, despite the regularity of the surface approximated by the fabric. In these snippets of varying curvature, the only one that displays symmetric branching is the smallest surface with the highest curvature, which has an increase at every branch point. Each surface was knitted by hand on 1.5 mm needles, some of which were severely bent in the process. Instead of binding off the knitting, I put the live stitches onto copper wire. For me, this emphasizes the necessarily open-ending of knitting the hyperbolic plane.