Jennifer E. Padilla

Statement

I am a mixed media artist and calligrapher with a background in academic scientific research. My artwork explores aperiodic tile patterns and expands upon the concept of illuminated manuscripts in the expression of mathematical and scientific knowledge. I embed expository material into my designs, creating a dialogue between the creation of art from mathematical concepts (such as depictions of aperiodic tilings), and the exposition itself (written equations, proofs, geometric constructions, schematics.) The technical or abstract subject matter, and the writing about the subject matter, simultaneously become the artistic subject matter, rendering both the abstract content and the human expression of the content for aesthetic appreciation.

Artworks

Inspired by Islamic geometric tile designs and a desire to see them re-imagined within the framework of the known aperiodic 2D tilings of the plane, Moroccan tile motifs appear here inside the rhomb-shaped prototile of the Ammann-Beenker tiling. The square prototile is left open. The individual 3D-printed tiles are strung together with cord and chain along the same lines as the Ammann bars of the tiling: four parallel sets of infinite straight lines, spaced by a non-repeating pattern of long, L, and short, S, distances. With its local 8-fold symmetries and intrinsic octagonal shapes, the spacing has a ratio of √2 to 1. This work hangs freely, with slight flexibility, the light shining through the semitransparent rhombs like stained glass.

The Smith Turtle aperiodic monotile is modeled here for fun as part of a monumental sculpture. The partially closed cylinder is strung together along complementary sets of Golden Ammann Bars that feature in an alternate proof of the aperiodicity of the turtle tile.