Web Sites

Wildlife Photographs
A few hundred photographs I took, mostly of birds and animals, while on safari in Kenya in July 2007 (on the Flickr web site).

Washington Sculptors Group
Sculptors' group for the Washington, D.C. area. I'm the moderator for the online discussion group.

Baltimore Sculptors, Inc.
Sculptors' group for the Greater Baltimore area. I'm the treasurer.

International Sculpture Center (ISC)
The International Sculpture Center advances the creation and understanding of sculpture and its unique, vital contribution to society. My work is in the Portfolio section.

Art & Science Collaborations, Inc.
An organization for artists interested in science and technology, and scientists interested in art.

The Cloud Appreciation Society
For people who like to look at clouds. People from all over the world send in photos and artwork.

Polytek
Moldmaking materials and training workshops, highly recommended.

Ball Consulting
Information about Forton MG, in which I cast my reliefs.

George Glazer Gallery, New York
My brother George sells antique globes, maps, prints and books, with an emphasis on the themes of exploration and discovery. I design and maintain the site, and write most of the descriptions.

Books

• Philip Ball. Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts Oxford Univ. Press: 2009.

Consists of 3 books explaining complex scientific concepts for the layperson: Flow, Shapes, and Branches. Flow is the best explanation of fluid dynamics for the non-scientist that I've seen.

• David Edwards. Artscience: Creativity in the Post-Google Generation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2008.

The author makes an impassioned case for breaking down the boundaries between artists and scientists. Most of his success stories, however, are of scientists learning from art rather than the other way around.

• Theodor Schwenk. Chaos: The Creation of Flowing Forms in Water and Air. Rev. ed. East Sussex: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1996.

Illustrated with photographs and diagrams, this book explains the movement of fluids and how they shape our environment from small scale (unicellular organisms) to large scale (winding rivers, cloud formations). I prefer to ignore the Rudolf Steineresque philosophizing that pops up here and there.

• John Briggs. Fractals: The Patterns of Chaos. New York: Touchstone, 1992.

What I call an "NPR Science Friday"-style introduction to chaos and complexity theory and what they teach us about patterns in nature. That is, this book is geared toward the non-scientist,, leaving out the advanced math. Lots of illustrations, and includes a section on how these scientific ideas have influenced contemporary artists.

• Mark C. Taylor. The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003.

A discussion of complexity theory and new models of understanding systems as networks in various stages of stability and instability. The author suggests that these ideas about networks have ramifications beyond science and technology, as a way of understanding the humanities, culture and the arts.

• D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. On Growth and Form. 1942. Rev. ed. New York: Dover, 1992.

A classic (and lengthy!) study on how growth proceeds in organisms according to mathematical formulae, and how different patterns of growth produce different physical forms, for example the spiraling forms of a mollusk shell.