Adventures in Texture – That Obscure Object of Desire

I am a little bit of a mathmatics groupie. I left math unpursued when I was in school because as an artist with tunnel vision, I saw no beauty in it. As I have gotten older, and perhaps because I do not possess an equal fluidity with the mechanics of numbers as with the mechanics of language or art, it has an elusive sexiness and remains a fascination just out of reach. I know now, that mathmatics and art compliment each other, which is why I find the recent chatter about mathmatical origami so appealing (It isn’t anything new, but I’ve heard a lot about it floating in the ether lately).

Last night I was listening to MIT professor Erik Demaine talk about the beauty of ordinary paper pleats and the unexpected forms that arise. My obsession with recreating what he was doing meant that I didn’t get to bed until 4am, but it was worth it…

These are just pleated concentric squares. When all of the pleats are in place, it no longer lays flat but arcs.

These aren’t hard, but there is a disconnect between what you know, what your hands are doing, and what you are seeing emerge. It’s like the old art class exercise of recreating Escher drawings. You know what you are doing, you understand why it works, but you don’t entirely believe it.

Now it’s late and I’m just mucking around folding more paper. The above was trying to merge the zig zag quality and playing around with alternating mountains. All of a sudden it began to wrap around itself and eventually ended up as a column.

This reminded me of shots I did a couple of days ago of vegetables. In trying to capture the texture, I find myself surprised by the light and shadow. In trying to capture the light and shadows, I find that I am surprised by the texture that becomes apparent.

And that leads me to this morning when I woke up and noticed the line of site when I open my eyes through three rooms and reaching to cold late summer sunlight streaming through the windows. It was really beautiful and I was lucky enough to have my phone on the nightstand. I was able to capture that light, another object of desire- to catch not just a quality of light, but the emotional weight attached to it.

The second is a different look and I like it, but it’s a bit of a cheat since I disturbed the scene a bit. The cat could not be convinced to resume his pose.