Art
I've always had a bit of an artistic streak. Knitting, and poetry have always been a part of my life, but recently I have decided to take up sculpture. This new medium has been entertaining and enjoyable to say the least. To satisfy my music urges, I play the Guitar and Ukelele. Some of my poetry and writing can be considered art, and I always enjoy writing as a creative outlet.
This piece is a representative piece of the beauty and deceptively simple nature of complex mathematics. I wanted to convey an idea of the infinite levels of this math, as well as convey how visually interesting math can be.
Knitting
I started knitting in fourth grade when I decided to make all of my christmas presents. In fourth grade all I could make was coasters, but now after eight years of practice I have moved up from coasters to sweatbands to hats and socks to complex shapes. I have started selling many of my hats and other products at school to people with cold heads and feet. I don't pull in an amazing profit, but it is helpful. My current project is actually a piece of sculpture that I'm knitting out of wire taken out of a Cat-5 cable. The wire is devilishly annoying to knit, especially as I keep getting stabbed. It looks good though, and that's all I really care about.
The sculpture represents the amount of pressure and reliance we have on the infrastructure of the internet. The little bit of wire representing the internet has to hold up the massive amount of weight that is most of the information of the human race.
Most of the time spent on this sculpture was spent on the design and development of the piece. The knitting went together quickly after I came up with what I wanted to make. It isn't quite finished, but I hope that it will progress quickly.
Sculpture
This year I've decided to take 3D studio art, and this has jump-started my foray into sculpture. I have actually been enjoying it immensely. After a little bit of a rough start trying to find my footing, I have been flying around experimenting with all of the different aspects of sculpture. My current project is a topographic sculpture, inspired by a nautilus shell and its use of the golden ratio. Most of my projects include some kind of mathematics or science background. It's fun trying to throw in as many little subtle things as I can, and I enjoy putting multiple layers of meaning and a dash of humor into my projects.
An Experiment in Flow
This one was an experiment to try and see if I could create a sense of movement and transition using only flat, static parts. The shape and orientation of the piece was inspired by the movement of a sea-snake. I used the zip-ties to create offset lines that continued in the shape of the main piece, while still adding extra color
What Goes In
This sculpture is meant to represent the idea that ideas cannot be contained within one single head. Secrets and ideas that are not shared will only fester until they break free. I unfortunately don't have any pictures of the completed project, but the one above is a rendering of the project, and below are the pieces I used to put it together. The rendering doesn't show the fact that the back part of the head is left open and the pieces are falling apart behind the main sculpture, representing the fact that this head couldn't hold all of its secrets.
Music
During freshman year I decided to take up the guitar, and have had quite a good time fiddling around with different musical ideas and genres. I did get a ukelele for my last birthday, and that has allowed me to become a lot more portable with my music. While I play guitar strictly as a hobby, it has been an inspiration for a lot of the other things that I've done. In my engineering class this year I'm making a guitar (you can read about that on my engineering page) and for one of my videos I played a guitarist (you can see that one on my videos page). Guitars have also inspired me to investigate acoustic physics and string physics. Whenever I need to unwind, I'll pick up my guitar or ukelele and take a break for a while to relax.
Writing
Whenever I have some free time, I always enjoy writing a little bit of poetry or a short story. I wanted to take creative writing this year to practice this talent, but my schedule would not allow me to take the class. The class is set up where everyone in the class has a pen name, that way students can give criticism without knowing who they're criticizing. This has given me the perfect opportunity, because I can still do all of the work and have it be graded, without actually having to be in the class. I have therefore been submitting all of the assigned work for the class, without actually being part of it. I've been getting reports back of a confused teacher, but that doesn't worry me too much. It actually makes it all the more enjoyable if the teacher doesn't know what's going on. You can see many of my stories in the navigation bar on the right if you care to read some. Some of them are poems, so they're pretty short. Enjoy!
