This 8-inch, diameter, one-of-a-kind, acrylic sculpture consists of an
inner red star surrounded by a yellow corona. It is designed to hang
and the two components do not touch each other. The star has twelve
large 5-sided spikes and twenty smaller 3-sided spikes, all assembled
from sixty identical angular components. The corona is assembled from
twenty identical curved components, which give the effect of swirling
motion. If you look straight down on a spike, you see that arms from
five of the yellow parts combine to make a circle around the spike, as
in the image below:
Both components are based on stellations of the icosahedron. The outer
corona is based on the first stellation and the inner star shape is
based on number 53 in the list by Coxeter et al. If you want to
understand it well, I suggest making a paper model from the
instructions given on this
page. Each of the sixty parts makes up part of a large 5-sided
spike and a small 3-sided spike. In the plexiglas sculpture, the parts
were laser-cut with two openings, making for a very rich and intricate
interior, which is hard to capture in a photo.
This computer-rendered model
of the star gives a good sense of its structure. A high-res image shows some of the
fine details.
