Artist's Studio, England

LIFE HEIGHT 15 INCHES (40CM) POLISHED STAINLESS STEEL 1996 "the miracle of replication"

Like all children, I was fascinated by snowflakes, and this naturally lead to crystals. I made a wooden copy of a cubic pyrite crystal from Spain, in an attempt to understand and feel the growth of the structure.

This lead to my thinking about a basic shape that could multiply and change in form. I began with half of a rhombus of Fertility, which could grow into a hexagram, and then into a hexagon.

Imagine a sheet of these hexagons can roll up into a ball, as shown in the sculpture. For me it now resembles a living creature, a Diatom, and has become LIFE.

The Center for Computational Biology at  the University of Montana have an animated version of LIFE (594KB).