My next Guest Artist is Stephen Mooney of Brown Moon Designs. Many of his designs are based on Fractal Images, or interesting arrangements of Pentominoes, which are are like dominoes, except five squares are used to make each piece.

Stephen writes: "These designs have a common motivation. I have always been intrigued by repeating patterns. Whether wall paper, wall tiles, or the bathroom floor. My unique perspective on needlepoint comes from my background in Mathematics, and a 33 plus year career as a computer programmer."

	"Hortus"  20" x 20" Appleton yarn on 14 guage.

"The piece above, "Hortus" is actually part of the infinite Penrose tiling. There are many relationships among the parts of this picture on many different scales. But it is also just fun to look at without trying to find anything."

	"Galaxy - Mandelbrot Set"

"Fractals are made up of a simple pattern, and a recursion rule to operate on the pattern. Strictly speaking, the recursion rule is applied infinitely many times. However, if you stop the recursion at some point, and choose a clever way to assign different colors to parts of the interrupted recursion, many beautiful designs appear. These are popularly known as Fractals. The Mandelbrot Set is a popular type of fractal."

	"Fornax"  19" x 19"

Fornax is based on Pentomino puzzles. You can read
all about how Stephen develops his designs, on his website.


Below are three of his fascinating 'Fractal' virtual needlepoint designs.

	"Fractal6" - "Green Spiral" and "Fractal7"

*Stephen Mooney has updated his website at
www.brownmoon.net
April 2006 - Stephen has now completed his latest piece "Pinwheel".
Late last year he added one of his designs, "Saint George and the Dragon", that has been stitched by his Mother.


You can contact Stephen by email: BrownMoon@aol.com


 
Stephen's article about his work was published in the March/April 2003
Needlepoint Now Magazine

All of the designed pieces dispayed are Copyright of the individual artists.