Artists
Statement
I spent 30 years teaching maths to secondary school students aged from 11 to 18. I tried throughout to bring the out the connections between art and maths as a way of engaging students. Those who struggled with the subject were motivated when taking care measuring, calculating and constructing produced a beautiful design or 3D object. So often, I have witnessed the sense of wonder appearing across the face of a child when the third face of a hexaflexagon appears, I wanted to try that fabric engineering challenge myself using colour and patchwork to showcase the magic.
Artworks
Fabric Hexaflexagon
38.0 x 45.0 x 2.0 cm
Cotton fabric and thread, polyester interfacing and wadding
2025
I wanted to use coloured fabric to highlight how the 6 unique faces of a hexaflexagon cycle differ. Using 12 colours that matched reasonably to a standard colour wheel, I split into 3 groups of 4 adjacent colours – around red, blue and yellow – to show how at any point, an entire hexagon of colour is hidden. The 4 patches on each equilateral triangle were arranged to highlight the 2 versions of each hexagon of a particular colour - one has a star, one a central hexagon. When there is a star on one side, a hexagon version, in another colour is on the reverse. Outline quilting stitches distinguish between the 6 rhombi on each face that remain flat and the 6 that split into equilateral triangles during the flexing process.