Sharol Nau

Statement

During covid I, the artist, attended several workshops on "iris folding". Later my husband, the mathematician, started designing them using what he termed "Twisters", matrices that apply dilation and rotation to polygons. He left his results lying around which I tried to adapt to my purposes. Finding that some of the designs I liked were a little too "tight", it was easy for him to modify the parameters in his Mathematica program to yield various designs that were feasible for me and others to work with. Two of these are exhibited here. The colorful one uses origami paper, whereas the black and white one uses recycled envelope liners which is a common practice.

Artworks

This iris folding is based on a Twister matrix that was designed to twist a larger rhombus into a smaller one. R, the mathematician, took notice of earlier non-math inspired ones that I had left lying around in my studio and started to produce similar designs using what he termed "Twisters," matrices that apply dilation and rotation to polygons. Then he left his results lying around, which I tried to adapt to my purposes. Finding that some of the designs I liked were a little too "tight," it was easy for him to modify the parameters in his Mathematica program to yield various designs that were feasible for me and others to work with. The one here uses origami paper.

This iris folding is based on a Twister matrix that was designed to twist a larger rectangle into a smaller one. During covid I attended workshops on iris folding, a craft that originated in Holland and was experiencing a revival. R, the mathematician in the house, eventually took notice and produced similar designs using what he termed "Twisters," matrices that apply dilation and rotation to polygons. Parameters in the matrix include the number of folds and the dilation rates. For this sample, two rates were used. The outer rectangle uses the golden ratio; the inner one not quite. The medium is recycled envelope liners.