Anneke Meijer-Treep

Statement

From an early age, I have studied patterns in nature. First through mathematics, later by practising skills for living off the land. My favorite became twining string, in particular from bark of the linden tree, which eventually told me "There's interesting math here". So I set out to explore how and why. This led me to model twine string by crocheting long, cylindrical "bodies" covered with crocheted stripes. A technique that also allowed me to create "rolling" toruses. I'm fascinated by the symmetries in twine string and Rolling Toruses — they seem to live and move, while objects with mirror symmetries feel stiff and rigid. I wonder if our society's focus on the latter has anything to do with the way we treat nature...

Artworks

After many hours of making twine string from linden tree bark, the fibers told me "There's interesting math here." My approach to crocheting twine string models then evolved into making toruses that can be rotated around their circular axis. Varying my patterns, I found that such "Rolling Toruses" come in families. The panel displays one such family. The eleven objects of this family all have the same body pattern, but differ in the amount of twist applied before forming a torus and adding on the covering line. From left to right, each step adds one full twist, giving each a unique amount of tension. The natural "easing" of this tension yields different shapes, with twine string structures appearing at the left and right extremes.