One of the things I've been horribly remiss about is writing about things that aren't work. Considering that I'm known as a workaholic, and that I readily admit it as truth, this is depressing but ultimately unsurprising of me. In order to celebrate the completion of my paper for Professor Tong (fifteen pages of analysis and thirty-seven pages total), I will write about something that I really do enjoy: the intersection between mathematics and art.

As someone who's drawn, sketched, and painted throughout their childhood, and as someone who still loves to draw and go to art museums, I've had the pleasure of seeing how geometric principles play into the horizon line, how shapes interact to create something almost three dimensional, and how simple lines and brush strokes create something beautiful. That shade of indigo was once just paint, but now it is a tablecloth. The ochre on the other side of the palette washes out to become the brown hues of the basket. It is something I take great joy in doing and losing hours to the development of a still life.

Contours of the fruitUntitled still life (2013), Adrienne Ou — Contours of the fruit
Untitled still life (2013), Adrienne Ou

Layering colors on the fruitUntitled still life (2013), Adrienne Ou — Layering colors on the fruit
Untitled still life (2013), Adrienne Ou

Finished productUntitled still life (2013), Adrienne Ou — Finished product
Untitled still life (2013), Adrienne Ou

While the stereotype of artsy people is that they're not very good at science or the mathematics, I also loved geometry and algebra in high school (calculus a little less so, but that was more due to my teacher's instructing methods more than anything else). I'm currently reading How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg, and it is fantastic fun. I really enjoyed the elegant art of geometry proofs and binomial equations, and I enjoyed the science of combining chemicals and pigments in my watercolors.

With all that exposition laid out, it should come to no surprise that one of the most expensive things I own (not comparable to the diploma I will be receiving in four months, but equally as cherished) is a blanket. It is a fairly good descriptor of my sense of design and aesthetics.

This is not a childhood blanket, or just any blanket, really. It is a $250 blanket that utilizes Italian cashmere wool sewn to form tetrahedrons. It is beautiful, it is soft, it is wonderful, and it alarmed my mother so much that she hid it under a pillow to avoid seeing it once, because really, what blanket looks like that?!

Granted, it looks too stiff to be comfortable. But it is actually cashmere wool, and thus, the softest thing ever. The tetrahedrons are quite flexible and so it looks equally beautiful as a statement piece or as a throw. Some consider form over function and that aesthetics should reign supreme. Others believe that function is the primary purpose of an object and that the appearance of the object is secondary. However, the view I favor the most is that form is function. Of course, it's a postmodernist view of the world, and as someone raised in the twenty-first century, I am well embedded in said understanding of objects and how we should relate to them.

The Bloom Blanket is atmospheric, lush, and geometric. I don't think that art, mathematics, and science are at odds with each other at all. In fact, their combination is what makes this blanket such a beautiful object. Ron Resch's tessellations and their origami applications are beautiful in their precision and elegance. To see how the fabric of the wool maintains the shape of those tessellations while also delivering comfort is a joy unto itself. One does not have to sacrifice form for function or vice versa, and that is something that I take great pleasure in seeing in my life and in the world around me.

I am both a producer and consumer of art. Art objects are not merely the paintings gracing the walls of my childhood home but also the blanket I curl into when I have free time to read Ellenberg's fluid writing. As an Epicurean, I don't believe in sybaritic hedonism, but I do believe in surrounding myself in the well-designed things that denote a higher way of living. As Aristotle emphasizes and elaborates at great length in Politics, eudaimonia (flourishing, happiness) is the telos (endpoint, final goal) of life. We should all surround ourselves with the things that make us happy and flourish.