Intersections
A Public Art Exhibition
Laurel Shastri
A lifelong love of learning, science, and dance coalesced when Laurel Shastri (MS in Geology) became a teaching artist twenty-five years ago. Her creative mission to integrate dance authentically yielded a number of unique units, including ‘The Scientific Dancer’, ‘Meaningful Movement’, and ‘DANCE as ACTIVism.’ Her work is featured in the college text ‘Creating Meaning Through Literature and the Arts,’ by Claudia Cornett. She inspired thousands of students through Arts Council Santa Cruz County Artist-Teacher Partnership, Montalvo Teaching Artist Program, and Tennessee Art Commission arts education programs and was honored to receive Ballet Tennessee’s Dance Alive Legacy Award. She has led interactive, well-received workshops for educators in Tennessee, Florida, and California. She is a dancer with MoveSpeakSpin directed by her husband, mathematician and choreographer, Karl Schaffer. His influence and love of math inspires her to create mathematical artwork using textiles, an avocation she enjoys when not dancing. Two of her creations (Octonion in 2023, The Story of How We Met, and Look! Pretty Buttons! in 2024) first displayed in the Bridges Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design.
Artwork
The Story of How We Met, and Look! Pretty Buttons!
Thread, rings, fabric
18” x 18”
We met over star polygons. You* were leading an action-packed workshop integrating math and dance. We had created rhythms using the consonants and vowels of our names, played our names as polyrhythms with a partner, transformed rhythms into whole body movement, and now you were showing how different polyrhythms (patterns of sound) could graphically be represented as stars with different numbers of points. As a teaching artist myself integrating dance and science, I was familiar with movement and patterns, but you blew my mind with the exquisite connection between complex rhythms and star polygons.
That might have been the end of it, but it wasn't.
And now here we are… looking at pretty buttons.
+++
This is a galaxy of thread ring buttons arranged in a spiral with traditional buttons at the center. Buttons are loosely grouped by number of spokes that increase moving outward along the spiral. Each button plays with variations and combinations of star polygons. This artwork celebrates the beautiful patterns found in shirtlace buttons, which are made by wrapping thread around a ring (first in spokes then in segments around the spokes) and covering any gaps on the ring with blanket stitches. The seven traditional buttons, one of which is a Dorset button, gave me the techniques necessary to explore the possibilities. The rest are discoveries of color, design, pattern and curiosity. Encapsulated within each button is the story of how we met.
*Karl Schaffer (mathematician, choreographer, dancer, educator, and husband)