The Geometry of Lilies

Abstract

FLOWERS CAN BLOOM from the mathematical mind. Matt, the mathematician in the family, wrings petals from paper by practicing ori gami, the ancient, Oriental art of paper folding. Given enough paper and time, he can create a garden of intricate shapes. It is the complexity of ori gami that drives him ?a hundred folds for a single design is not uncom mon? but what he does has its own grace, a thumb-twisted elegance. The result is a wondrous mix of clarity and clutter, a paper knot in the form of a rose, perhaps, or a daisy, a creation that seems light and whimsical, the intricacy relegated to accordion folds hidden away. Matt wadded up a lot of paper in his early attempts at the art. He found a book on the subject ?a bad translation from the Korean with sentences like this: Through the occlusion of fold 'a' angles 'b' and 'c' emerge simul taneously. Little emerged from such language, unfortunately, and even when the instructions were clear, the task remained complex and difficult. The simplest shape required ten to twelve folds any one of which, done wrong, turned up a donkey with two tails or a three-legged giraffe, mutants which found their way, in a wad, to my son's trash can. With practice Matt learned most of what he needed to know and even tually mastered the subtleties of the art. In minutes now he can turn a sheet of colored paper into a flower, a donkey, or a star. No flat page in the house is safe. A quick inspection of one shelf turns up a dog, a swan, a camel, a grasshopper, a pig, and a panda. Pterodactyls, wings clipped snugly to the next shelf up, hover menacingly above the scene. I love to watch him amid such clutter create designs, his fingers producing abundantly within the constraints of his own devising. Love and discipline meet in these shapes, a boundless, creative energy in the mix. I see in them a rough draft for the geometry of lilies and catch a glimpse of the folds in our lives as well.