Ulrich Mikloweit

Statement

For more than 50 years I have been fascinated by making paper polyhedron models. Starting from the Stella Octangula where I wanted to see exactly how the faces penetrate each other I continued making polyhedra I saw in Escher's pictures. Then I stepped across Magnus Wenninger's uniform polyhedron models and my life goal lay before me: constructing all uniform polyhedra in my technique with perforated faces where hidden parts of the faces are visible. This set still isn't complete because I encountered lots of other interesting shapes like noble polyhedra or compounds. But I'm still confident that it will be completed within some years.

Artworks

The Great Inverted Snub Icosidodecahedron is a uniform polyhedron and the 116th in Wenniger's book "polyhedron models." It is set up by 60+20 equilateral triangles and 12 pentagrams. I used 11 colours for the triangles and 4 colours for the pentagrams. I cut patterns into the faces with scissors and knives. Through these holes you can see the hidden parts of faces lying deep under the surface.

This model can be obtained by connecting the vertices of the icosidodecahedron in a way that 60 identical crossed tetragons arise, also called "butterflies." This shape is noble because the 60 faces AND the 60 vertices are congruent. Five colours were used.