2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings
Adam Rowe
Artists
Statement
My work is about hidden worlds. I make geometric and abstractive works in traditional media, addressing subjects such as topology, tiling, and recursivity.
Artworks
This piece provides a convenient map for any frog planning a route from the center to the edge of a pond. It works with a standard pond containing nine lily pads. Starting from the center, the frog may jump either to the next pad, or skip as many as it likes, as long as the last hop it takes ends at the edge of the pond.
After the initial hop, choose a shape connected by the same color. Follow the outline color of that shape for the subsequent choice. Hops landing on the pond's edge are indicated with black outlines.
thirty unique Truchet-tiled cubes
31.0 x 31.0 x 31.0 cm
wood (walnut) with etched glass and pine base
2025
Ignoring rotations, there are exactly thirty ways to arrange six unique images on a cube. Each of the thirty cubes in this piece is tiled with a unique arrangement from a set of six tiles composed of curves and lines.
These tiles work with Truchet tiling in that they contain similar elements (different numbers of noodles and nubs) in different configurations. They can cover a plane in any random arrangement, as shown on the base. Connected patterns also emerge across perpendicular planes in any arrangement of the cubes.