I don’t like to pick favorites, but even though I resist when people ask me, my favorite number is 5. I loved to draw five-sided stars when I was a child because you can draw them with one line. As someone who was dragged through the tortures of the 1960s experiment with New Math, I find the halfway point between multiples of ten comforting in this base-10 world. Five is an interesting number for an artist to work with, it takes some thought and planning, even if you aren’t aiming for perfection. You can’t just jump right in an divide pieces in half – you have to plan fairly carefully to make sides balance.
All of that was true even before I became obsessed with Echinodermata – marine animals with five-fold (pentaradial!) symmetry including sea urchins, sea cucumbers, blastoids, crinoids, etc. Interestingly, many of these animals are bilateral at first and then become pentaradial as adults – a process that gets my design juices really flowing.
So here are a few images of five-sided pieces I have made. Enjoy!
Echinoid Bracelet w/ pearls and gold leaf (2012)
Small echinoid vessel (2011)
Blastoid (2011)