Roads Untaken

George W. Hart

Here is one of my favorite sculptures: Roads Untaken. A mosaic of three exotic hardwoods (yellowheart, paela, and padauk) with walnut "grout," it is 17 inches in diameter, and stands 21 inches on the base. Those are the natural colors; it is just oiled, not stained. The ball just rests on the three struts, so it can be lifted and returned in any orientation.

Let your eye meander along the light roads which run between hexagons or the dark roads which run between triangles. Is there a yellow path from any hexagon to any other hexagon? Is there a red path from any triangle to any other triangle? The form can be called the exploded propellorized truncated icosahedron.

This computer-generated image, colored by polygon type, gives another view of its structure.

For a sense of scale, the above image shows it installed at a show at the Clayton Liberatore Gallery, in the summer of 1999. It is low, near the floor, so people can sit around it like a meditation object. (That was my pony tail phase, now phased out.)

Puzzles: Guess how many pieces of wood there are! What interesting polyhedral compound do the dark roads outline?

Answers: At very bottom of this page.

Answers: 902 pieces; the compound of six pentagonal prisms.