Glass Sculpture: Thirty Transcendent Virtues

See Triacontahedrons

Thirty Metaphysical Values

Happily there are times when creative visualization, followed by creative action, brings forth into physical reality an artifact which exceeds the inspiring concept. I am fortunate to experience this joy in multiple fields of endeavor.

Several of my designs in the fields of architecture, computer science and digital art have risen to this level. However, I anticipate my greatest joy will be in the creation of kiln formed glass objects. I say this because my recent creation, ‘Thirty Transcendent Virtues’ has been most rewarding.

I met the great architect and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller while studying architecture in college. Bucky inspired me to explore spherical geometries.

Creating a single golden rhombus in fused glass is virtuous. But successfully joining thirty glass rhombus in a spherical rhombic triacontahedron is transcendent. The individual glass facetsjoin together with an embedded copper wire network to form a unique glass vessel that encompasses space, color, light, movement, texture, transparency, reflection, and radiance in a wholegreater than its parts.

Meditation upon this glass art object enables self to witness symmetry, beauty and truth beyond self.

Green-Blue Triacontahedron – fused glass sculpture.

The Thirty Verses of Vasubandhu

Vasubandhu was the author of a wonderful, short document which we refer to as The Thirty Verses of Vasubandhu (Tri sikavijñaptikarika ).

A version of this document has been translated by the famous modern-day Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thich_Nhat_Hanh). The document can be found at: http://pvom.org/ This is the Plum Village Online Monastery website, which is founded by Thich Nhat Hanh.

I was quite thrilled to eventually discover The Thirty Verses of Vasubandhu translated by Thich Nhat Hanh online.

Perhaps I will make a Triacon that has each verse of the The Thirty Verses of Vasubandhu inscribed on the faces of a Triacon artwork.

My intuition was that the number thirty (30) had significance within Buddhism, however I discovered after lots of searching that there are very few Buddhist teachings that refer to the number thirty. I searched extensively. I performed this search because of my fascination with the Triacon which has thirty (30) faces and had an inner voice tell me that there was an important Buddhist teaching that I must learn about.

Karmatetra