Katherine A Seaton

Statement

I am a mathematician, university lecturer (retired) and some-time fiber artist. I delight in the mathematics that can be experienced in the construction, by hand, of pieces of knitting, crochet and embroidery, and in the thought that our grandmothers and great-grandmothers constructed mathematics this way, too. I frequently, but not exclusively, use recycled or remnant materials. Sashiko is a stitching technique born of frugality. Its domestic origin, together with its geometry and symmetry, instantly appealed to me when I became aware of this embroidery style.

Artworks

The iterates leading to the von Koch snowflake (Mandelbrot preferred the term 'island') up to order four appear in this piece of hitomezashi. Within and between the islands float six-petalled flowers, singly and in posies. This original design extends hitomezashi to the isometric grid and appears to provide a novel approach to a well-known fractal. Entirely different motifs, also with six-fold symmetry, appear on the reverse. (You may turn up the end of the piece to see some of these.)