Felicia Tabing
I recently learned about Lomonaco and Kauffman’s knot mosaics, which inspired me to create a set of carved blocks so that I can create prints of projections of knots. As a reference to nautical knots and a physical knot, I carved an image of rope into the blocks. I carved the rope in negative on square blocks so in printing, the ink will inevitably overlap. In the process of printing, I went from printing knot mosaics with a minimal number of tiles to designing knot projections so that the image of the knot fills up a given space with only non-empty tiles. I also transitioned from printing in solid color to printing with a gradient of colors to exhibit the different rotations of the tile, which resulted in more interesting visual effects.
This block print is the image of a 17-crossing knot with alternate crossings on the border of the print. The motivation for the creation of this knot image was to create an odd number of alternate crossings, while ensuring the knot fills in the center and that that there is only one knot and no links. Although the block colors seem random, the yellow and green gradation in the ink on the tiles shows the rotations of the block that were used. The knot in the image has some symmetries, while also filling up the rectangular space with nonempty tiles. Unrelated to the mathematical content, the colors of the ink and paper reference the neon color schemes of the 80’s and early 90’s.