Geometric Sculpture George W. Hart e-mail: george@georgehart.com   http://www.georgehart.com/  85 Oak Street  Northport, NY    11768  USA  (631) 754-2722 As a sculptor of constructive geometric forms, my work deals with patterns and relationships derived from classical ideals of balance and symmetry.  Mathematical yet organic, these abstract forms invite the viewer to partake of the geometric aesthetic.  I use a variety of media, including paper, wood, plastic, metal, and assemblages of common household objects.  Classical forms are pushed in new directions, so viewers can take pleasure in their Platonic beauty yet recognize how they are updated for our complex high-tech times.  I share with many artists the idea that a pure form is a worthy object, and select for each piece the materials that best carry that form. In one series of pieces, familiar objects are arranged in engaging configurations, displaying an essential tension between mundane individual components and the strikingly original totality.  Because my works invite contemplation, slowly revealing their content, some viewers see them as meditation objects.  A lively dancing energy moves within each piece and flows out to the viewer.  The integral wholeness of each self-contained sculpture presents a crystalline purity, a conundrum of complexity, and a stark simplicity.

This page shows some of my own favorite pieces.  Click on any image for a larger image and mathematical description.  As with all sculpture, 2D images can't really convey the presence they have in person, and it can be remarkable how differently they appear from different angles, so you'll have to extrapolate from the images here.  Most everything shown below will fit through a doorway, but I am seeking sites and commissions for larger works.  If you are interested, let me know... 
 

	Fire and Ice oak and brass  24"  currently at Vorpal Gallery
	I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear acrylic plastic  18"  currently at Vorpal Gallery
	Battered Moonlight paper mache over steel  21 inches
	No Picnic  spoons, knives, forks  variable dimensions, up to 16 feet in length  destroyed at Hofstra University, student center
	Yin and Yang walnut and basswood  7" diameter
	Disk Combobulation 3.5 inch floppy diskettes  12 inches  at Goudreau Museum, New Hyde Park, NY
	The Color-Matched Dissection of the Rhombic Enneacontahedron acrylic plastic shell, acid-free card stock  20 inches
	72 pencils 72 pencils  8 inches
	Gazmogenesis copper  12 inches
	Chiral Quartet installation at 2000 A.D. at the Vanderbilt museum, Centerport, NY, November 1997 - January 1998
	Music of the Sphere steel  10 inches diameter, 36 tall
	The Plastic Tableware of Damocles 180 plastic knives  26 inches
	Rorschachohedron wood covered in synthetic fur, base of  epoxy composite over steel, painted with pink enamel.  16 inches
	Stretto 204 CDs  26 inches
	Fat and Skinny walnut, maple, and brass  23 inches
	Chronosynclastic Infundibulum 150 CDs  34 inches  Long Island Museum of Science and Technology
	Whoville aluminum  35 inches
	Labia 360 CDs  33 inch diameter
	Roads Untaken exotic hardwoods (yellowheart, paela, and padauk) with walnut "grout,"  17 inch diameter
	Propello-octahedron 150 CDs  26"  Princeton University Dept. Mathematics
	Leonardo Project Cherry reconstructions of Leonardo da Vinci's Models
	The Susurrus of the Sea transparent blue acrylic plastic  16"
	Septvaginta Duarus Planus Vacuus Cherry  16"  currently at Vorpal Gallery
	Loopy painted aluminum  8 foot  shown at Mather Hospital, Port Jefferson
	Rainbow Bits 642 CDROMs  77 inch diameter  U.C. Berkeley, Dept. Computer Science  Rainbow Bits Construction
	Millennium Bookball Wood and bronze,  5 foot diameter  Commission for Northport Public Library  Northport, NY. Community Assembly Event
	Gonads of the Rich and Famous 3D printing  two balls, 3" each
	Five-Legged-Bee Hive 3D printing  3"
	Deep Structure 3D printing  4"

Public and Corporate Artworks

• Northport Public Library (1999)
• Long Island Museum of Science and Technology (1999)
• U.C. Berkeley, Dept. Computer Science, Soda Hall (1999)
• Princeton University, Mathematics Dept. common room (1998)
• Goudreau Museum of Mathematics in Art and Science, New Hyde Park, NY  (1998)

Ongoing Group Shows

• Art & Math 2001, Berkshire Community College, Pittsfield , Massachusetts, Feb 1-March 30
• Vorpal Gallery, 459 W. Broadway, 5th floor, Soho, New York City, Jan 1999-ongoing; (212) 777-3939.

Recent Group Shows

• Art & Mathematics 2000, The Cooper Union, NY, Nov. 7 - Dec. 15 2000.
• Colloquium on Math and Arts Exhibition, Maubeuge, France (Sept. 2000)
• Elaine Benson Gallery, Bridghampton, NY.  (July 2000)
• Walt Whitman National Historic Birthplace Gallery, Huntington, NY (March-May 2000)
• Northport Museum, Northport, NY (May-July 2000)
• International Society of Art, Math, and Architecture, Exhibit at SUNY Albany (June 2000)
• Digital Soup II, Fayetteville Arts Council, N.C. (April-May 2000)
• b.j. Spoke Gallery, 299 Main St., Huntington, NY (Sept-Oct 1999)

• Mather Hospital Annual Outdoor Sculpture Show, Port Jefferson, NY (June-August 1999)
• Clayton Liberatore Gallery, Montauk Hwy., Bridgehampton, NY (May 1999)
• Northport Museum, Do Art: Summer Exhibition, Northport NY (May-July 1999)
• Soundview Gallery, Port Jefferson, NY (Nov. 1998-March 1999)
• 10th Annual Juried Fine Arts Exhibition at Chelsea Center, East Norwich, NY, Award of Excellence (Oct. 1998)
• Huntington Station Arts, Huntington, NY (Oct.-Nov. 1998)
• SOMA Gallery, Northport, NY, (Sept.-Oct. 1998)
• Math and Art 1998 Exhibition, U.C. Berkeley, California (August 1998)
• Bridges Exhibition, Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas (July 1998)
• Northport Museum, Northport, NY (June-July 1998)
• Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, Centerport, NY (Dec. 1997-Jan. 1998)
• Hofstra University, Student Center (1997-2000)
• Math and Art 1997 Exhibition, SUNY Albany, NY (June 1997)

Grants/Awards

• Individual Artist Award, New York State Council for the Arts. 1999,  to create Book Ball, a geometric construction of books celebrating the millennium.
• Award of Excellence, 10th Annual Juried Fine Arts Exhibition at Chelsea Center, 1998.

Recent sculpture-related papers and presentations

• "Loopy," Humanistic Mathematics, to appear, 2001.
• "Computational Geometry for Sculpture," (to appear) ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry, Tufts University, June 2001. (invited plenary speaker)
• Craig S. Kaplan and G. Hart, "Symmetrohedra: Polyhedra from Symmetric Placement of Regular Polygons," to appear in Proceedings of Bridges 2001: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science, Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas, July 2001.
• Douglas Zongker and G. Hart, "Blending Polyhedra with Overlays," to appear in Proceedings of Bridges 2001: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science, Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas, July 2001.
• "Solid-Segment Sculptures," Colloquium on Math and Arts, Maubeuge, France, 20-22, Sept. 2000. (online copy)
• "Sculpture based on Propellorized Polyhedra," Proceedings of  MOSAIC 2000, University of Washington, Seattle, Aug 21-24, 2000. (online copy)
• "The Millennium Bookball,"  Proceedings of Bridges 2000: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music and Science, Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas, July 28-30, 2000, and in Visual Mathematics Vol. 2 No. 3, 2000. (US copy)
• "Geometric Sculpture," ISAMA 2000, SUNY Albany, NY, June 24-28, 2000.
• "Reticulated Geodesic Constructions," Computers and Graphics 24(6), Dec. 2000. (online version)
• "Computer Modeling and Construction of Geometrical Sculpture," U.C. Berkeley, Feb. 1999.
• "Geometric Sculpture," Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, Nov. 2, 1998.
• "Geometric Sculpture," New York Academy of Sciences, October, 1, 1998.
• "Polyhedra and Art," Art and Math '98, U.C. Berkeley, August 3-7, 1998. (online version)
• "Paper Prototype of a Geometric Sculpture: Whoville," (Invited workshop presentation) Art and Math '98, U.C. Berkeley, August 3-7, 1998.
• "Icosahedral Constructions," in Proceedings of Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music and Science, Southwestern College, Winfield, Kansas, July 28-30, 1998, pp. 195-202 (invited presentation). (online copy)
• "Zonish Polyhedra," Proceedings of Mathematics and Design '98, San Sebastian, Spain, June 1-4,1998. (online copy)
• Math awareness week, keynote speech, Rhode Island College, Providence, RI, April, 1998
• "Polyhedra Models over the Internet", MAA Mathfest, Atlanta GA, August, 1997.
• "Calculating Canonical Polyhedra," Mathematica in Research and Education, Vol. 6 No. 3, Summer, 1997, pp. 5-10. (online version)
• "Zonohedrification," The Mathematica Journal, vol. 7 no. 3, 1999. (online version for subscribers)
• "Applications of Virtual Reality and Java for Illustrating Polyhedral Geometry over the Internet," Conference on Electronic Communication of Mathematics, Geometry Center, U. Minn. June 1997.
• "A Color-Matching Dissection of the Rhombic Enneacontahedron," Art and Math conference, S.U.N.Y. Albany, N.Y., June, 1997. (online version)
• "Virtual Reality Polyhedra," Art and Mathematics Conference, SUNY Albany, NY, June, 1996.

 

New Book about the Beauty of Geometry

• George W. Hart and Henri Picciotto, Zome Geometry: Hands-on Learning with Zome Models, Key Curriculum Press. (more information)

More

Check out a nice photo with one of my models which made the NY Times.  Read an interview that appeared in studioNOTES.  Read an interview that appeared in Ubiquity.  See my entry at sculpture magazine. 

For background on the historical relationships between polyhedra and art, see the Polyhedra and Art section of my online Encyclopedia of Polyhedra. This was the topic of my talk at the 1998 Art and Math conference at Berkeley. I also make paper polyhedron models which are more at the mathematics end of the scale than the art end. Somewhere in between, I put my "geometric constructions," which blend math and art more evenly. Finally, you might also like to look at some of my 2D computer-generated images, which are concepts for sculptures too difficult to realize physically, or some of my early plotter drawings. 

If you like this stuff, here are some links to some other geometric sculptors you may like: Brent Collins, Helaman Ferguson, Bathsheba Grossman, Jean-Pierre Hébert, Chris Palmer, Charles Perry, John Robinson, Carlo Sequin, Arthur Silverman, Ken Snelson, Simon Thomas, Keizo Ushio, Koos Verhoeff.  For more, see the International Society for Art, Math, and Architecture.  There is also general information for/about sculptors at Richard Collins' www.sculptor.org site. 

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