I'm drawn to crafting objects whose construction requires puzzle-solving. In pursuit of design goals, I often stumble across fun puzzles and wind up not only with an interesting object, but also with a deeper understanding of some bit of mathematics. Crafting the artworks below, which are based on the new aperiodic tiling, provided me with an opportunity to ponder and learn more about this exciting new discovery. My experiences as a maker/crafter/artist/puzzler are also reflected in the book I coauthored with Susan Goldstine, “Crafting Conundrums: Puzzles and Patterns for the Bead Crochet Artist.”
Artworks
Aperiodic Flock
90.0 x 90.0 cm
digital print on silk fabric
2023
Based on the Spectre tile described in the paper A Chiral Aperiodic Monotile by David Smith, Joseph Samuel Myers, Craig S. Kaplan, and Chaim Goodman-Strauss, I constructed my tile as a vector graphic and carefully adjusted the curves to make it look to me more like a bird in flight. I drew the bird’s inner features by hand in pencil on paper and then aligned a photo of my drawing with the vector graphic to create a finished tile that could be pasted and rotated within Adobe Illustrator. Using Kaplan’s interactive application for producing patches of an aperiodic tiling, I made a patch large enough to copy the tile relationships and produce a patch of my birds on a 3 by 3 foot silk canvas.
Frieze Flock
160.0 x 45.0 cm
digital print on silk fabric
2024
Using the same Spectre bird tiling I created for my Aperiodic Flock artwork, I colored the birds with 12 distinct colors according to the 12 tile orientations possible in the aperiodic tiling. Applying ideas from Craig Kaplan's Bridges 2024 paper, I located and extracted a section of the aperiodic tiling that happened to match itself on its left and right edges. Having each tile orientation painted a different color made it easier to eyeball and locate such a section. Because of this matching, it is possible to overlay and repeat the section to create a periodic Frieze pattern. This long skinny silk scarf has room for around 4 periods, or 4 such repeats of the extracted section.
