Dan Gries is a mathematics and computer science educator who writes code to produce digital prints, pen plotter drawings, 3D printed objects, animations, and physical installations.,A background in mathematics informs the work, which is drawn to imperfection and irregularity in shapes, colors, and flows, and to the human connection to that imperfection.
Gries holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from Ohio State University and taught at Merrimack College in Massachusetts and in a visiting position at Hamilton College in New York before settling into teaching at Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut. Gries took up serious programming while teaching college mathematics, first with ActionScript for Flash, then JavaScript in the browser, before settling on Processing as a preferred language for making art.
The series Dots grew out of an attempt to write code that could draw circles that look hand-drawn, using an algorithm that varies a circle's radius as it is drawn.Two large-scale prints from the series Fractal Cylinders, whose closed curves morph smoothly from left to right through a fractal-subdivision process, hang as permanent installations in the Yale Science Building and the Halene Laboratory.In “Art From Code”, an exhibition at the Ives Gallery of the New Haven Free Public Library, Gries showed works including the piece Rose Fractal Cylinder and pieces from the Chaos Game Fractals series, which uses the fractal flame algorithm created by Scott Draves.,
