2026 Joint Mathematics Meetings
Eve Torrence
Artists
Eve Torrence
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics
Randolph-Macon College
Ashland, Virginia, USA
Statement
I enjoy creating sculptures that allow me to share the beauty of geometry and topology with a general audience. I usually work with inexpensive materials, such as yarn, paper, felt, and craft foam. These materials adapt well to hands-on workshops, allowing me to share my discoveries and designs. I hope to communicate that mathematics is accessible and interesting to people who may have never had the opportunity to be inspired by mathematics.
Artworks
Proud Parents
17.0 x 33.0 x 33.0 cm
yarn, fishing line, poly-fil
2025
The two-color closed surface in this group is made by joining the two other surfaces along their boundaries, each of which is a (3, 4)-torus knot. The green surface is non-orientable genus 5 and the purple surface is non-orientable genus 4. The closed surface is a sphere with 9 cross-caps, so it is non-orientable genus 9. Since two cross-caps form a Klein bottle, the two-color surface is also the connected sum of four Klein bottles and a real projective plane.
These models were created using techniques developed by Shiying Dong. These topological concepts, and crochet directions for these models, are discussed in our forthcoming book, "Unraveling Topological Crochet."