An X-ray of “The Impossible Stairs" would reveal this abstract understructure. I've demonstrated how we can make pictures with nothing more than perfect circles and straight lines, but can we make a picture using only lines? Yes, we can.
It might bring to mind something architectural… with perspective lines converging at a distant vanishing point. But when you look closer at the pencil drawing, there is no perspective.
In 9th grade, my family and I moved to London. The townhouse we lived in had very unusual architecture. It was extremely tall with many floors built around a central staircase. My bedroom was on the top floor and this was the view looking down from the upper landing.
I had the idea to designed a piece of Art that was communicable to a friend over the telephone, and since we didn’t have home computers or internet yet, I found another solution. I used simple coordinates so anyone could replicate my drawing if they knew how to connecting the dots.
The details are not as "mathy" as you would think. I just numbered around the perimeter of a 20 x 30 rectangle. I then sat on the stairs and drew each line while keeping track of the numbers I was connecting.
Years after high school, when I lived in The Barn, I successfully recreated “The Impossible Stairs” - Here are the two renditions and the original page of instructions.
The first drawing is the pencil sketch and the second is fully rendered.
The writing in image 3 reads: “The numbers are connected by lines as described here, and in the end, you will see an image of the impossible staircase emerge out of pure abstraction. Try it yourself.”