The Beautiful Math of Coral – Margaret Wertheim

Sitting in the studio, working through materials and planning out the space, I have been thinking about a lot of things in an associative way. What I mean by this is that I often make objects that remind me of certain processes and objects through my own personal associations. A Rorschach test is a good example of free association, and recently the lace garter belts began to imitate the famous Swiss psychological experiment. A lot of the objects and color ways in this installation refer to oceans and sea scapes, marine wildlife, and creatures that dwell in deep waters. But I never set out to intentionally create marine wildlife! The process continues to be deeply subconscious and so much of the craft process has always been this way for me. So when I came across Margaret Wertheim’s TED talk where she merges ocean worlds, math, hyperbolic geometry and feminine handicrafts, I felt deeply validated. It made me think of my mother, a trained physicist and her relationship to seeing and making things. It feels so true that these patterns and pathways live in my DNA as much as my lived experience and will continue to emerge if I let them.