Alain NICOLAS
My goal is to reveal the wonderful worlds that can be created on a simple sheet of paper when we are inspired by the mathematical laws that govern our universe. I create my drawings to sing the glory of infinity with a deep faith in the beauty of the natural order and an absolute desire to "do better than well".
M.C. ESCHER has amazed the world with his tessellations of creatures.
But there are another shapes that humans easily recognize: the written letters of the alphabet. They join them and recognize words! It has been a mystery to me why Escher did not design tessellations with words. In my book "Parcelles d'infini", published in 2005, I presented what I believe are the first word-tile tessellations.
"Casse-Tête" is my latest and longest word tessellation. "Casse-Tête" is the French word for puzzle; the literal translation is “Head-Breaker”! It is based on a P4 tile type that is composed of a base tile divided into eleven sub-tiles. The base tile is rotated and translated to cover the plane and colored such that the words can be read.