David Kaufman

Statement

I am an explorer. In 2017, a visit to the Smithsonian inspired me to explore symmetry and tessellations. I created an application called Polygonia.design, a collection of vector-based graphic design tools. The vision was to create physical versions of the designs made in Polygonia, something to manipulate and interact with, something to pick up and look at from different angles, something to set in the window or to wear. Every material and every medium becomes an area to explore. What could be done with wood? Paper? Acrylic? Fabric? 3D printing? How could designs be layered? How will the shapes within the designs interact with each other? Should the focus be on the negative space or the positive? The possibilities are endless.

Artworks

"Mona" is a shadow. The work consists of parallel strips whose heights vary and are proportional to the darkness of the original image. The image you are seeing consists of the shadows of the strips. It is only visible when the light is above the work. The background of the strips is blank. I was exploring converting images to low resolution tessellations, similar to a half-tone image, and then strips of varying width, when I wondered if it was possible to align the strips perpendicular to the page, so that the shadows would become the image. I extended the application I developed so that it would generate a 3D model (an STL file) so I could 3D print the result.

Triacontahedron with laser-cut faces designed in Polygonia.