For three decades, New Orleans artist Arthur Silverman, 82, has made sculptures based on the tetrahedron, a polyhedron with four faces. (Think of a pyramid with a triangular base.) A surgeon-turned-artist, Silverman welds together metal plates into the sculptures. His pieces range from huge public sculptures to small works displayed in galleries. From Science News:
"The tetrahedron is very exciting visually," Silverman says. "It's very difficult to anticipate what you are going to see. Every step around a piece gives you a different view."We're accustomed to thinking about orientation in space in terms of three perpendicular axes. A tetrahedron has no right angles. So, a tetrahedral structure jars us out of spatial complacency. It has so few faces, its aspect changes abruptly as you move around to view it from different angles…
"I find that the unique geometric relations intrinsic to the tetrahedron persist in the final sculpture, notwithstanding all the manipulations I carry out," Silverman notes. At the same time, "photographs do not do these works justice," he contends. "One must actually see, feel, and walk around these works in order to experience them in their totality."
Previously on BB:
• Knitting mathematics Link
• Gigantic Klein bottle Link
• Moebius strip playground equipment Link
• Beautiful metal math models Link
