Artist to host free geometric design workshop at Rice Creek

Pittsburgh-based artist James Gyre will provide a free, hands-on workshop titled “The Essentials of Geometric Design: A Master Class for Beginners” at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 12, at SUNY Oswego’s Rice Creek Field Station.

The workshop is free, open to all and requires no math expertise. Those under 17 need to be accompanied by an adult. Limited parking is available adjacent to the field station’s headquarters building, with more spaces near the Thompson Road entrance, about a mile south of the main SUNY Oswego campus.

Gyre, founder of an arts and crafts business called Naked Geometry, said he uses nature’s elegance in everyday design, presenting these forms in their pure state. In the workshop, he will cover aspects of the use of geometry in the arts, including basic polygons and their behaviors, the golden ratio, space-filling tiles and their infinite variations, secrets of M.C. Escher, Celtic knot work and Islamic art.

He also will discuss geodesic domes, the brainchild of architect and inventor Buckminister Fuller. Gyre’s workshop is among the activities surrounding “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller,” a live documentary to be shown by its director, Sam Green, with a concurrent performance by indie band Yo La Tengo at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 16, in the college’s Hewitt ballroom.

Hands-on activities at Gyre’s workshop will include exploring five-sided geometry with wooden Penrose tiles, Platonic and Archimedean solids with Zometools, and various models of important geometric figures, viewed in 2D and 3D.

A free exhibition of Gyre’s work, titled “The Nature of Geometry, the Geometry of Nature,” is on display at Rice Creek Field Station through March 12.

For more information, contact Artswego at 315-312-4581 or Rice Creek at 315-312-6677.