Mathematics and art: Doesn't it sound as though these are two things that don't go together? When I talk to art people, they usually apologize, “Math was my worst subject,” and, when I talk to math people, they tend to complain that they “can't draw.” The joining of art and mathematics is possible for everyone who touches and is touched by my sculpture.

Mathematics and its uses are complex. Among other things, mathematics is a language that has three interesting features.

Feature A: you can choose a level of abstraction (eliminate inessentials).

Feature B: you can economize (condense information).

Feature C: you can predict a lot of what will happen (control the future).

These three features were crucial in my discovery that mathematics is a great design language for doing sculpture.

Let's take a simple example and show how these three features of mathematical language come up naturally. The example is a sculpture that I carved in stone—a pair of Klein bottles that link and unlink. When linked, these two rotate around and through each other. To link and unlink they translate through and past each other. It is remarkable to me that two pieces of stone could have such a relationship. Relationships are important for everybody. Human relationships have been an expressive subject for visual artists for centuries. The 32-year relationship between my wife and me was the relationship I had in mind while I was discovering this sculpture.