Whoville

George W. Hart


Whoville can be seen as 60 identical “doorways” passing through each other. It is assembled with rivets and has a brushed surface finish. I wanted to create a sense of confused ups and downs, after Escher, in a self-contained form. The name derives from Dr. Seuss’ stories about Whoville.  As I worked, I recognized the curve I made was similar to his doorways.
A close-up image shows its riveted construction and brushed surface finish. Like many of my pieces, this would scale up beautifully to a 20 foot or larger sculpture you may have a site for.  Let me know if you want to commission me...

For those who want to know the geometric details, the form derives from an icosahedron and dodecahedron in mutually dual position, which would lie in the empty central region of the sculpture.  The five-fold dimples correspond to the vertices of the icosahedron and the three-fold dimples (in the “basements” of the three-sided buildings) correspond to the vertices of the dodecahedron.  The lines of the sculpture extend or parallel the edges of these polyhedra.  The rectangular form of each doorway was chosen to be a golden rectangle and the triangles chosen to create parallel planes.

As is often the case, I found that making paper models was a good method for working out some of the details of construction and determining the exact shape I wanted for the curve.



copyright 1999, George W. Hart