Clay, Art, and Craft

"In my life I see no difference between making pots, cooking and growing vegetables. They are all so related. However, there is a need for me to work in clay. It is so gratifying and I get so much joy from it, and it gives me many answers in my life."

Mario Merz installing Igloo Fibonacci at Sonnabend Gallery, New York, in 1970. From the series of archival photographs in our current exhibition, Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New.

Romanesco superficially resembles a cauliflower, but it is light green in colour, and its form is strikingly fractal in nature. The inflorescence (the bud) is self-similar in character, with the branched meristems making up a logarithmic spiral. In this sense the bud’s form approximates a natural fractal; each bud is composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic spiral. This self-similar pattern continues at several smaller levels. The pattern is only an approximate fractal since the pattern eventually terminates when the feature size becomes sufficiently small. The number of spirals on the head of Romanesco broccoli is a Fibonacci number. In computer graphics, its pattern has been modeled as a recursive helical arrangement of cones.

Gary Lane