August 25th marked the unveiling of “Finity” a public sculpture by Tom Shannon, my dad, outside Science Museum Oklahoma (SMO) in Oklahoma City. “Finity” stacks the 5 Platonic solids in mirror polished stainless steel, 25 feet tall. The shapes have incredible shared properties, for example they all have the same volume of 50 cubic ft (many other points worth looking up). A couple thousand years ago natural philosophers associated the regular solids with the basic elements they considered making up the world. The tetrahedron symbolized fire, the octahedron air, the cube earth, the icosahedron water and the dodecahedron the cosmos. We have been working on this project since 2017 in part with the curator at SMO, Scott Henderson in conjunction with a show Tom had at the museum. To see it through was a great adventure and I’m proud to have been a part of it. Each shape rotates completely independently and can be pushed by hand or turned by the wind. Within an hour of installation, kids entering the museum were already playing with the sculpture. Reminds of of growing up in Tom’s studio where we never questioned the possibility and fun of touching (breaking?) his work. Being Oklahoma though this sculpture is indeed tornado proof. Swipe to see the piece being installed and finally a prototype of sorts from 1971, right around when Tom moved to NYC... Finity, 50 years in the making.