Susan D. Jones

Statement

I have been writing Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanky) for over 50 years, and one of the foundations of the art is dividing the surface of an egg into sections before deciding on design elements. Most of the traditional divisions begin with eight triangular sections — an octahedron! But a few years ago my world expanded when a math teacher divided an egg for me into twelve pentagons — a dodecahedron! With the help of another math friend, my polyhedron world has expanded again: Archimedean solids, Catalan solids, Joined polyhedra, Johnson solids and Fullerenes. I have continued to use traditional Ukrainian symbols, but also invent entirely new motifs, in the spaces these new divisions yield.

Artworks

These eggs were divided to represent various polyhedra, understanding that some straight edges of a polyhedron will be curved lines on an egg, and some faces will be distorted by the egg’s shape. Very few of these divisions are traditional in Ukrainian folk art, but I have always tried to find new and exciting ways to divide the egg’s surface. Discovering websites devoted to polyhedra was like a door opening to countless possibilities. I am still very much in discovery mode, taking an art form I have practiced for half a century into new territory. In the world of pysanky, nobody else is doing this. I hope to change that.

When I first started writing pysanky (the Ukrainian word pysanka comes from the verb “to write”) over fifty years ago, most egg designs, based on ancient folk art, started with an egg divided into eight equal triangular sections. When a friend showed me some web pages of polyhedra, at first just the Archimedean ones, I was determined to translate all of them to the surface of eggs. I have learned a great deal about polyhedra, and I continue to learn more, while keeping many of my designs firmly rooted in tradition. Divisions like the Octahedron, Tetrahedron and the DisdyakisDodecahedron are actually very ancient divisions. Anything based on the dodecahedron or icosahedron are brand new.