Felicia Tabing

Statement

I created a series of block prints that are inspired by Lomanaco and Kauffman's knot tilings. These are created with hand-carved blocks that when printed by hand, inevitable overlap. I print these by hand because the nature of human error shows through in these prints and in my eyes makes it more interesting than if I made these same images perfect on a computer. Through making these series of prints, I explored the question of how to fill in dimensions of space with knot projections and how this limits the number of crossings, and also how to create symmetry with knots in a given dimensions. My latest projects are placing knot images on a mobius strip and the torus to turn the image into a puzzle of how many knots exist in the print.

Artworks

This block print is of a 24-crossing knot inspired by Lomonaco and Kauffman’s knot mosaics, printed from a four-block set that I carved of knot-tiling projections. In reference to nautical knots, the knot strands on the blocks are styled as rope, which when printed, features the paper showing through the ink. This particular knot was designed to have a large number of crossings that fills in the space with at least one strand per block. The knot has rotational symmetry that is slightly imperfect when rotated 180 degrees. The block print was printed with gradient inks that changes from white and green to lavender and green as the blocks radiate outwards toward the border, so the title of the piece references the colors of the lavender plant.