Interlaced bigons, 2020

My first ‘polished’ out-of-plane lace network model. I used Rhino/Grasshopper and some lucky guesswork to approximate distances between nodes, interpolating between short ‘closed’ unit cells and long ‘open’ ones that occupied a similar footprint in the lattice, thereby avoiding any additional frustration. This model was part of the 2021 Joint Mathematics Meetings Art Exhibition, made in collaboration with Veronika Irvine, Yinong Tao, Tian Yu, Stefana Parascho, and Sigrid Adriaenssens.

Periodic surface, 2023

Leather, PET, hardware, gold leaf, oak veneer, graphite, acrylic/cellulose dispersion, 24” x 52”. Made in collaboration with Prof. Sigrid Adriaenssens of the Form Finding Lab at Princeton University for the exhibition, Connecting Artifacts 03, Komaba Museum, Tokyo.

This piece builds on a method I developed two years earlier to approximate the form of lace networks made from ribbon elements with prescribed node–node distances (details here). Starting from an arbitrary surface, I compute a network of intersecting bigon unit cells, topologically equivalent to bobbin lace’s traditional torchon ground. In this piece, the target shape was a periodic surface of mounds with antiferromagnetic (alternating up/down) orientation, which mimics the torchon ground lattice but at a larger scale. I also impose geometric distortion on the lattice, mapped to the surface’s scalar height, which I have learned from previous iterations of this work tends to ‘lock’ the unit cell orientation and thus global conformation of the network — effectively drying up the energy landscape to fewer accessible stable minima.

The strips are cut from unfinished, vegetable-tanned leather that I chose for its viscoelasticity, which tends more towards being stiff and elastic, but with a certain amount of sculptability that helps absorb and smooth out some of the more awkward geometric moments. I laminated thin plastic to the reverse side to add stiffness and conceal laser-cut scorch marks; in practice, the materials are poorly matched and some strips are delaminating, so I won’t do this again.

The network is mounted to a hand-made wood panel faced with oak veneer, painted with the planar projection of the lattice. New veg-tan begins with a light pink color, then darkens with light exposure, going beige, then deep brown. The wood ground was initially darker than the strips, but its tone is converging; over time (measured in years), the relationship may invert.

Some process images:

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