Tuesday, November 28, 2017

Geometrikon Vertical Angles


I'm back from Chessiecon, just as I returned from this convention since 1981. Despite not having an art show, I had a good time with my friends and held my legendary room party, "Salon Pyracantha." I served and tasted delicious wine, and ate well at local restaurants too. The hotel, though, is in serious need of upgrades. There were four separate failures impacting me and the other guests. 1. The electronic door lock on my room failed to go and an engineer had to remove and replace the battery and its programming. 2. While getting some ice from the ice machine, I knocked off the steel facing cap and it crashed loudly to the floor at 3 AM, revealing a mildew-ridden freezer unit. 3. The heater in my room was so worn out it started up with a chunking and roaring noise every half hour or so, making it impossible for me to sleep. 4. The central elevator in the vast hangar-like building failed and the engineers were unable to fix it. 

This building which was rather avant-garde in 1988 complete with an indoor swimming pool atrium, has now outlived its usefulness and I say it should be demolished and replaced with a fresh new hotel. Otherwise in my imagination it would collapse of its own decrepitude.

This Geometrikon has nothing to do with a decaying hotel. I don't think it depicts anything but it does sort of look like reflective glass on a skyscraper. The design is based on "vertical angles" which is something you learn early in your geometry classes. Vertical angles are X's, two intersecting lines that divide a place into four quarters. Each quarter has an angle which is equal in degrees to its opposite in the X. "Vertical angles are equal" gives you a lot of opportunities to do proofs in geometry.

Ink drawing on sketchbook page, colored in Photoshop, 3 1/2" x 3", November 28, 2017.

1 comment:

Texchanchan said...

That hotel's in awful condition for only being 30 years old. Hard to believe investors would let it go like that. I went to a convention last year in an old hotel, but it had been taken care of and the only problems were a small elevator and one day a huge divider in the conference room wouldn't open (to break it up into smaller meeting rooms).

And on the eclipse trip my brother and I stayed one night in a hotel from the early 1900s that was in the process of being fixed up. Our room had a private bath by virtue of the bathroom's door to the next room being locked. I think all the bathrooms were retrofitted sometime in the thirties. There was no elevator, only narrow steps, and no air conditioning, but it didn't need any because of the altitude. It was quaint as the dickens and lots of fun.