Intersections
A Public Art Exhibition
Eve Torrence
Eve Torrence is professor emeritus of mathematics at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia, where she was an award-winning teacher from 1994 to 2021.
Eve has participated in juried Exhibitions of Mathematical Art at the Joint Mathematics Meetings and the Bridges Conference since 2010. In 2015, her piece, Day, received the Best of Show People's Choice Award at the Bridges exhibition. Day is currently part of an exhibit of pieces from past Bridges shows on display at the Science Museum of Virginia.
Eve enjoys creating sculptures that allow her to share the beauty of geometry and topology with a general audience. She usually works with inexpensive materials, such as yarn, paper, fabric, and craft foam. These materials adapt well to hands-on workshops, allowing her to share her discoveries and designs. She hopes to communicate that mathematics is accessible and interesting to people who may have never had the opportunity to be inspired by mathematics.
Eve is a member of the Bridges Organization Board and has served as an editor for seven Bridges Conference Proceedings. She is currently working on a book on topological crochet with Shiying Dong.
Artwork
Mother and Child
Yarn, fishing line
16” x 6” x 6"
$425
The mother in this pair of topological sculptures has 12 pentagonal holes and 20 triangular surface regions. The child has 20 triangular holes and 12 pentagonal surface regions. They can both be thought of as an icosidodecahedron. Both surfaces have 6 boundaries, which are topologically equivalent to a polylink of 6 pentagons.
The child contains the same number of stitches in essentially the same pattern as the mother. The triangular openings cause the child to be smaller. The boundary is forced to be wavy in order to fit the same number of stitches into the smaller footprint.
The child snuggles easily inside the mother, but can also stand on its own. It is more playful than its rigid parent.