WOMEN'S CAUCUS FOR ART - COLORADO CHAPTER

Sierpinski's Triangle: In the Aspen Forest
mixed media (paint, printmaking on masonite)

This piece deals with the magnification of images formed on Aspen tree bark by either human graffiti or natural scarring. One such image is the Aspen 'tree eye'. That 'eye' is symbolic of 'peering' into the tree, and magnifying the results to minute detail, or complete abstraction. Conversely, that 'eye' also represents a portal for nature to examine, focus and evaluate human activity and it's impact on nature and the environment!.

In the 1970's, Benoit Mandelbrot developed a 'new geometry' to describe irregularity and complexities in nature. He named fractals from 'fractua' (irregular), 'fractus…frangere', which means to break, create irregular fragments. A fractal is a geometric figure made up of patterns that repeat themselves at smaller and smaller scales. Regular fractals are exact copies, and while random fractals can include irregular natural patterns such as clouds and mountains. In Non-Euclidian terms of making "Math fit Nature", Mandelbrot said, "Clouds are not spheres, mountains not cones… and bark is not smooth…" (3) His 'model' of natural systems was inspired by another mathematician, Sierpinski who described a fractal triangle in 1916.

When trying to understand the irregularities we see in nature in a mathematical context, Linda found that "Sierpinski's Triangle" and fractals were obvious mathematical diagrams of 'infinite self-similarity' or 'infinite replacement'. Her explorations of seeing the forest, then the trees, then the bark, the images on the bark, the minute textures of the bark… are also artistic magnification processes. Serpinski's fractal triangle is used to create "works of infinite intricacy through repeated processes and magnification", and shows how "the whole is identical to a part, which is identical to a subpart and so on." While Sierpinski did his triangles in separate visual steps of magnification, Linda's Sierpinski's Triangle: In the Aspen Forest is the subsequent iteration of the magnified triangles overlaid upon my original / first triangle using 'tree eyes' as my repeated image.