Elements

Richert’s ongoing fascination with the periodic table dates back to the 1960s when, driven by his belief in the underlying order and symmetry of the universe, he asked the question “what if there were a crystalline lattice that could accommodate 120 elements?” He began actively exploring the topic through numerous sketches and paintings in the 1970s.

In 1980, Clark met a young geometer, Marc Pelletier, co-founder of Zometool. After Clark mentioned his ideas about the periodic table, Marc created what he saw as a more logical, consistent, and conceptually understandable structure—a 3-dimensional model of the table. Using the mathematical trivium that successive odd numbers add up to squares, he rearranged the number patterns of the old system and of the atomic shell structure. His ideas were published his ideas in Criss-Cross Art Communications, an art journal co-edited by Richert, in 1981 (Issue #11/12).

The conversations between the two served as a cross-pollination; and Richert incorporated these concepts into his work as he continued to elaborate in such artworks as “120 Elements” (1984), one of his most densely layered works. In the upper left-hand corner, top layers are pulled back to reveal a pyramidal stacking of the spheres, revealing the system developed by Pelletier. In a later piece, “Periodic Pyramid,” (2001), the artist depicts the underlying beauty of the table, which is presented in components as carefully placed, jewel-like objects on a dramatic, black background, along with a depiction of Pelletier’s 3-D model (“pyramid”) of the periodic table. Richert never lost interest in this topic, creating other sketches, prints and even an animation (Z-Space, 2005) focusing on the elements.