Photograph of Firebird sculpture

Photograph of a sculpture created by Morton C. Bradley, Jr., in 1971. This sculpture is a constellation of twelve great stellated dodecahedra surrounding a dodecahedron. Considered by Bradley to be his first successful geometric sculpture, Firebird also inaugurated his Constellation series, a group of early works focusing on the Platonic solids. Each of the twelve great stellated dodecahedra is painted in the same palette of twenty colors, and each is arranged around a dodecahedron, causing the points of the stellations to array in a planar fashion. As the Constellation slowly rotates, the sharp diagonals of the piece become apparent, and planes of mutating color slice in and out of view, evoking the four seasons.