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. I have now developed that further with a hexahexaflexagon - even more faces to wonder at!
Artworks
Fabric Hexahexaflexagon
40.0 x 45.0 x 5.0 cm
Cotton fabric and thread, polyester wadding and stiffener
2026
Having previously made a fabric hexaflexagon, a hexahexaflexagon was the next challenge – 6 different coloured hexagons and 12 unique faces. I used 3 primary colours with 3 secondary colours positioned to highlight the flexing properties of a hexahexaflexagon. The primary colours alone can appear flexing 3 times in succession, like a simple hexaflexagon, with the secondary colours never appearing. If at any point in the cycle the hexahexaflexagon is rotated 60 degrees before flexing, a secondary colour appears in a cycle of 3 colours including the 2 primary colours that make it. In this cycle, one of the primary colours will appear with its alternate face, which is highlighted by the star patchwork pattern being replaced by a hexagon.