Creation of art sometimes follows rules. What! Why? You’ll see. And, for varied reasons, new rules sometimes emerge along the way.

This started as a simple, innocent birthday sign. It’s a family tradition. It was Grandma’s 86th birthday. Signs are usually just scribbled onto pieces of paper.

But no. This one evolved from furtive scribbling to a gaudy triptych.

Rules for Grandma’s 86th birthday sign are listed below in the format:

Rule.

Official reason for rule.
Actual reason for rule.

A few preliminary guidelines kicked things off:

1. Must be rendered clandestinely.

Tradition stipulates that the Birthday Person mustn’t see their sign before that day.
That’s pretty much it.

2. Says “86”.

Grandma turned 86!
We’ve covered that.

3. Uses many colors.

Grandma delights in vivid color.
True story.

4. Must be done quickly.

This commission found us on short notice.
Her birthday was the next day.

The start of work soon added rules 5-7:

5. Use fancy heavy paper

A sturdy substrate gives artwork depth and authority.
There was some fancy but flawed cardstock handy in our scrap folder.

6. Use Sharpies

Sharpies provide casual yet bold and unrelenting color.
They were right there ready to go. And those fumes …

7. Disorganize the color scheme into random curvilinear patterns.

The wild color scheme reflects Grandma’s notorious chaos.
The initial hurried scribbling wanted to somehow become something more.

As work progressed, additional rules came about either organically or by necessity. Basically, 86 started to become a “thing”.

8. Edges must be smooth.

Smooth edges create a pleasing visual flow.
Rough edges of scribbling failed the “art test”.

9. Black fills spaces between other colors.

Black interludes add a certain drama to the piece.
Seemed like the thing to do?

10. Black areas must narrow to points colinear with local visual flow.

Tapered dark interpositions further accentuated the flowing multicolor motif.
Plain black blobs looked stupid.

11. Include rare tiny black lines.

Subtle aspects of the work reveal a sense of fine detail.
One accidental small black line needed friends.

12. Multicolored dots occupy encapsulated areas.

Dots fed umptious color into the starving spaces within character boundaries.
OK, well …

13. Yellow shadowing at 180° from vertical.

Unexpected yellow shadowing paradoxically lightens and lifts the work.
Found a yellow Sharpie late in the process.
Are the fumes from yellow the same? Or better??

14. Must qualify for inclusion in portfolio.

The Studio is highly selective in projects it entertains.
86 was taking much more time than planned.

15. Must not look like a little kid did it.

The Studio’s professional standards are never compromised.
It looked like a little kid did it. A kid high on Sharpie fumes. Hold it …

Panel 1 - 86

Those last couple rules really blew up in our face, so to speak. However, our data-driven approach cleared the path forward! We derived 8 mathematical expressions equal to 86. No punk-ass kid could come up with these formulae. The equivalencies encircle the number itself, a precious ring of equality to Grandma’s age.

Our math party around 86 feted such luminaries as pi, the Golden Mean, Euler’s number, logarithms, absolute values, exponents, trigonometric functions (represented by cosine), factorials, prime numbers, imaginary numbers, roots, rounding, basic operations, scientific notation, and of course that all-powerful multisyllabic master of nothing, the basement of bases, the null android, da fada of nada, the worst grade ever, the round ground, the uniquely absent, the “O” in “Origin”, the Posineganot, the nun nooky number, Mostel’s moniker, the nil pill, the divider denier, the limitless limiter, the nope to a slope, the prequel to equal, none other than that dreadnaught of integers, the none and lonely, ZERO (zero; 0).

The party went ballistic, so we took 86 to new places in the second and third panels of the triptych.

Panel 2 - Rolling ahead to 98

It turned up that 86 is one of those “gymnastic” numbers that can do different things when rotated, flipped, or mirrored. When rotated 180° in its plane, 86 becomes 98. (If such numbers have a specific name, we couldn’t find it. They’re not strictly strobogrammatic.)

So, we’re saving 86 to trot out again as 98 when Grandma turns that age in only 12 years! Expressed “mathartistically” (in both math and spatial terms), we have:

86+12 = 86*180° = 98

Panel 3 - A side note rolls us still further out (much further!)

So what happens when we keep only the right half of 98 (8) and turn it 90° (on its side)? We go to infinity! In mathartistic terms:

(98-90)*90° = (R1/2*98)*90° = ∞

Whoever gets there first can use panel 3 for their birthday sign. Grandma?

This could go on forever, but the next rollout would require Buzz Lightyear. So, we’ll sign off for now with this comment from Albert Einstein about infinity: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”

Party on! And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on. And on.

REFERENCES
https://www.mathopenref.com/
https://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/e-eulers-number.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/7/5/17500782/zero-number-math-explained
http://www.math.com/
https://mathworld.wolfram.com/
https://www.britannica.com/science/infinity-mathematics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strobogrammatic_number#:~:text=A%20strobogrammatic%20number%20is%20a,69%2C%2096%2C%201001).

Disclaimer:
No little kids were harmed in the creation of this work.