Civic Centre, Pietre Place, Canberra, Australia

ETERNITY HEIGHT 5FT (1.5m) POLISHED BRONZE 1980 "The Sum of the Sums is Eternity" "Summarum Summa est Aeternum *"

This sculpture was created in the first year of my SYMBOLIC SCULPTURE adventure. It followed DEPENDENT BEINGS, which depicted the union of man and woman as being the corner stone of our Civilisation. That union lasts but a brief moment, but is made possible by the union of our parents, and will lead to future unions by our children when they are grown, so is a part of a continuous whole. I needed to change the two-sided image of DEPENDENT BEINGS into a one-sided continuum to symbolise ETERNITY, a continuous whole. I prepared 100 equilateral triangles each with a hole in the middle, and threaded them onto a ring (the actual construction of ETERNITY is illustrated in three photographs, and discussed from its mathematical perspective in Fibre Bundles). This gave me three bands. By changing one of the edges to meet another, I found I was left with only one edge, and one band (this is looked at in Mobius Band ). It was a magical moment when I realized that I had created ETERNITY.

Robert A.Hefner III Collection , Aspen, USA

© Mathematics and Knots/Edition Limitee 1996 - 2002
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