Whoville
Whoville can be seen as 60 identical “doorways” passing
through each other. It is assembled with rivets and has a brushed surface
finish. I wanted to create a sense of confused ups and downs, after Escher,
in a self-contained form. The name derives from Dr. Seuss’ stories
about Whoville. As I worked, I recognized the curve I made was similar to
his doorways.
A close-up image shows its riveted construction and brushed surface
finish. Like many of my pieces, this would scale up beautifully to a 20 foot
or larger sculpture you may have a site for. Let me know if you want
to commission me...
For those who want to know the geometric details, the form derives from
an icosahedron and dodecahedron in mutually dual position, which would lie
in the empty central region of the sculpture. The five-fold dimples
correspond to the vertices of the icosahedron and the three-fold dimples
(in the “basements” of the three-sided buildings) correspond
to the vertices of the dodecahedron. The lines of the sculpture extend
or parallel the edges of these polyhedra. The rectangular form of each
doorway was chosen to be a golden rectangle and the triangles chosen to create
parallel planes.
As is often the case, I found that making paper models was a good method
for working out some of the details of construction and determining the exact
shape I wanted for the curve.
copyright 1999, George W. Hart
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