Duston Wetzel

Statement

I have been tinkering with stable arrangements of woven springs for about five years. My initial inspiration was to model the approximately helical geodesics of Schoen’s gyroid. I have recently been inspired by Gailiunas and Usineviciu. Here I display ten such arrangements in two series: The first series includes some of the triply periodic helical weaves from my associated paper (stacked hexagonal Moorish Fretwork, <100> tetrahedral, <100> trigonal Laves, and a 4-colored <111> trefoil Laves weave), as well as a new one discovered after completing the paper, the <111> simple annular weave. They are novel methods for creating 3D materials out of wire. The second series explores polyhedral variations on the trefoil crossing.

Artworks

I am currently aware of about twenty triply periodic helical weaves, and physical models of five I believe to be novel are displayed in this series. One is essentially stacked hexagonal Moorish Fretwork. Two follow Laves graphs (<100> trigonal Laves and <111> trefoil Laves weaves) and are essentially expanded rotations of approximately helical gyroid geodesics. One is a triply periodic representation of a tetrahedral repetitive unit discussed by Gailiunas at Bridges in 2016, and is related to the Schwarz diamond surface. The <111> simple annular weave has round crossings of four helices with one orientation. My method involves stretching springs to the correct pitch and then winding them together into freestanding arrangements.

In addition to triply periodic helical weaves, I have tinkered with arrangements of woven helices following the edges of polyhedra. This series of five roughly corresponds to the Platonic solids, and emphasizes the diversity of the trefoil crossing, the repetitive element common to each piece. The focal point of this series is a five-colored helical wire-woven truncated icosahedron, the shape of the panels on a soccer ball. Its color scheme was inspired by the well-known case of five intersecting tetrahedra. Its core is a dodecahedron woven out of trefoil crossings. The ends were then tucked into a second type of crossing on the outside of the hollow structure.