parpho@rogers.com

London has its Bridge, Paris has the Eiffel Tower and Sydney the Opera House. Here in Portsmouth Village we have Tetra.

The 'mathemagical' esthetic

The 20th century has seen a rise in non-representative sculpture based on the sculptor's efforts to communicate abstract ideas about spatial relations, geometry, volume, complex curvilinearity: in other words, "mathemagic", wrote the Kingston Whig-Standard Aug. 15. These works seek to meld the universal languages of sculpture and mathematics. Here in Kingston, we are fortunate to have two such pieces: Tetra and Time.

Tetra, a work by Ted Bieler, professor emeritus in York University's Faculty of Fine Arts, was commissioned to commemorate the Olympic sailing events held at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour in 1976. Tetra, 26 feet high, is constructed from aluminum. The sculpture features four diminishing regular tetrahedra rotated and placed at 90 degrees to each other.