About

I live in Ohio with my wife and 3 hound dogs, where I write and create fractal artwork in my spare time. I graduated in 2008 from the Ohio State University with a B.S. in Computer Science Engineering. Since then, I’ve been working as a software engineer and system analyst in the data center monitoring space for more than 15 years. However my interest in fractals goes back to when I started learning to program.

I enjoy creating fractal art for several reasons. Fractals come in all shapes and sizes, making it a wildly diverse area of mathematics to explore. It’s also a relatively new area of math with true exploration only becoming possible with the advent of computers. This makes it a frontier with so much still to be discovered and created. And as someone who spends most of their professional day looking at databases and low-level IoT data, fractals are also a nice way to stretch my visual creativity.

Over the years I’ve explored the traditional signposts of the Mandelbrot Set, the “Chaos Game”, and the Sierpinski Triangle. I’ve battled dragons, turned plants into strings of characters drawn by a turtle, and tried to use equations to make something that even vaguely resembled the leaves in my garden.

But for the last few years I’ve been working with cellular automata, something I initially dismissed as “boring” until I saw the Abelian Sandpile. The sandpile blends a desire to understand the physics of nature, with a visual model that is strikingly beautiful. Since first reading about the Abelian Sandpile, I’ve tried combining it with quilt blocks, setting it to music, and toppling over objects to see what new patterns can be created. I never expected to spend 3+ years on one type of fractal, but I continue to be inspired to experiment and explore.

Researching fractals has also helped me to build community with artists and other mathematicians. I’m grateful to the community at the Bridges Math + Art Conference for welcoming in an amateur mathematician, and for challenging me to push my work to the point that I can present papers in that environment. I’ve enjoyed being a part of the Mid-Ohio Fine Art Society as well, learning from some very talented people how to explore mediums beyond computers and how to think of my work from an artistic mindset. My goal in everything I do is to show that math can be fun and used to create something beautiful and unique.