Voronoi
r2 Gallery, launchpad, Carbondale CO
July 2020
Voronoi Flash Cards
Voronoi is named after Russian mathematician Georgy Feodosievych Voronoy who studied and defined mathematically this type of diagram and tessellation (tiling) pattern in 1908. Though informal use can be traced back to Decartes in 1644.
From seeds or starting points, it is a way that nature uses to fill space into discrete regions. A Voronoi pattern provides clues to natures’ tendency to favor efficiency: the closest neighbor, shortest path and tightest fit. Each region or cell in a Voronoi pattern has a seed point. Everything inside that cell is closest to it than any other seed. Each line along a region’s edge is equidistant from the two nearest seed points.
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
— Bertrand Russell
Flash Card Project
(invitational group exhibition)
I had been in the midst of a project for a future exhibition when all of a sudden I stopped working on it as I began to shelter in place. Stunned, at a loss, vulnerable and confused I was comforted to receive the flash card invitation, and subsequently receive my Corn Cob card. Being immediately impressed with the design of the kernels on the cob as well as the whole notion of f lash cards, I went with my first instinct and began to investigate the patterning of the kernels. It is a Voronoi pattern which provides clues to nature’s tendency to favor efficiency: tightest fit and shortest path. I was attracted to learn about something I didn’t know much about during this strange and daunting time of Covid. I reminisced too about how much I had enjoyed using f lash cards as a child. Drawing and painting the patterns brought solace and focus for me in this tumultuous time of uncertainty and crisis. Unfortunately it was only 10 days before the piece was to be submitted that I realized it could not be handled by the viewer as I had envisioned. In the moment of the delight and focus in making the Voronoi flash cards I had forgotten about the virus and the necessary restrictions for helping it not spread.