Paul Gailiunas

Statement

I have participated in every Bridges conference since 2000, and exhibited artwork since 2007, usually related to my conference presentation. I am interested in any visually interesting manifestation of mathematics, and have used a variety of media at various times: paper or card models, geometrical drawings, computer images, and I have used mathematically inspired designs in leather bookbindings. I exhibited basketry pieces using madweave in Coimbra (2011) and Enschede (2013), and a non-standard structure in Linz (2019). More recently I have been experimenting with kagome, not least because it is much quicker, and in 2021 and 2023 I used it to create closed surfaces.

Artworks

The gyroid is an infinite surface that divides space into pieces that are mirror images. It is not easy to visualize and models allow various ways to see it. Creating the kagome version presented some challenges. For example only part of the infinite structure can be made, leaving loose ends. The material is plastic strapping salvaged from industrial waste, and passing a hot needle through it creates enough of a weld to keep things together. The sharp corners remaining after the ends are trimmed give the impression of a fragment that has been broken from the infinite surface. The plastic is not bio-degradable, so in a temporal sense this is an enduring fragment of infinity.