Harish Kulkarni

Statement

I am an accidental artist. Throughout my childhood, I saw my mother draw Rangolis with rice powder at the threshold of the house. I had always wanted to understand these intricate geometric patterns at a deeper level. My son and I worked out the core ideas at JMM 2024 after a recreational math session. I built a prototype using simple ideas from graph theory. Soon I was able to generate rangolis of any size and symmetry. Then the math gave expression to a range of ideas: animated Eulerian rangolis, rangoli mazes, images converted to rangoli, 3d printed art, Lego compatible tiles, etc. This collaboration with my son is a tribute to a 2000 year old folk art from India that has been passed on from one generation to another.

Artworks

Rangoli, also called Kolam, Muggulu, etc. is an ancient folk-art form from India. Is this a purely artistic endeavor or is there a mathematical structure behind these patterns? The answer has connections to modern graph theory and tiling problems. This piece pays a colorful homage to six traditional designs of “dot kolams” emphasizing their inherent graph-theoretic property: that each color island can be described as an Eulerian circuit. Adding depth to their traditional two-dimensional form allows the circuits to describe themselves, inviting viewers to follow these paths with their eyes. This piece reinterprets a traditional art form with math, modern materials and technology; melding the past with the present.