Saturday, November 30, 2024

Tessellation Catch-Up

Things are moving steadily forward with the EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Print project at the end of 2024.  We have almost 60 linocut tiles in Albuquerque alone, and about the same amount in El Paso:

We are posting the individual linocuts online


We also hung our first "EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Exhibition" at Remarque Print Workshop in Albuquerque (on December 9th), piggybacking on their 12th Annual Juried International Print Exhibition, opening on Friday, December 13, 2024, 5 - 8 PM:

We hung our first EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Print exhibition
at Remarque Print Workshop in Albuquerque

Our exhibition will be open on Friday and Saturdays until January 25th, 2025:

Our tessellation show is piggybacking on 
Remarque's 12th International Juried Print Exhibition


RECENT LINOCUTS

 Juan Wijngaard,
Corrales, New Mexico


Gabriele Teich,
Las Cruces, New Mexico 


Jessi Cross,
Santa Fe, New Mexico


SOUTHWEST TESSELLATING

Now we are collecting tessellation tiles all across the Southwest --from Tucson, El Paso in addition to Albuquerque -- reprising the Desert Triangle Print Carpeta somehow:

MANUEL GUERRA has collected about 50 tessellation linocuts in El Paso:

Manuel Guerra with Susan"Skuishi" Gonzalez
printing tessellation tiles in El Paso


JOE MARSHALL is collecting tessellation tiles in Tucson:

Joe Marshall 
heading up the tessellations in Tucson


Joe Marshall's tessellation print
in Tucson

  • We also sent a stack of "hat" tessellation tiles to Tres Gatos Press in Guadalajara


COLLABORATIVE 
TESSELLATION PRINTS

We have been  making EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Prints steadily since May 2024, and have blogged about each session:


SELECTED PRINTS

Guerilla Tessellation Print -- at the South Broadway Cultural Center
Our first big tessellation print,
June 14, 2024

Printed at the Santa Fe Community College,
June 28, 2024

EL PASO Tessellation
Printed in El Paso,
July 15, 2024

CARVE-IT -- Tessellation Prints at HECHO A MANO gallery
Printed at Hecho A Mano gallery in Santa Fe,
September 14, 2024

SOUTHWEST PRINT FIESTA 2024 -- Tessellation After-Party
Printed during the Southwest Print Fiesta in Silver City,
October 12, 2024

A Great Day at Remarque in Albuquerque -- Tessellations
Printing in COLOR with Akua inks
at Remarque Print Workshop in Albuquerque,
November 23, 2024

OCTOBER SUMMARY -- 2024
Scott Wiggerman of Albuquerque
made this long print from the tiles he carved



LASER CUTTING

We have been laser cutting the "hat" tiles so that they are all exactly the same shape, and will tessellate smoothly.  We can get as many as 7 tiles from a 12x18 inch piece of unmounted linoleum from Takach Press:

FILES


Laser Cutting "Hat" Tessellation Tiles
We can get as many as 7 "hat" tiles
from a 12x18 piece of linoleum


Laser Cutting "Hat" Tessellation Tiles
We got 57 "hat" tiles
from 8 sheets of 12x18 linoleum



OTHER EXCITMENT


Julie Sola of Las Vegas, New Mexico
carved a tessellation tile


We printed individual tessellation tiles
on aprons


Live tessellation printing in Santa Fe
at HECHO A MANO gallery 


Kyle Durrie, organizer of the Southwest Print Fiesta,
accepts one of our big tessellation prints


Julie Hayes is up for carving a linocut,
after winning the maze 
designed and laser cut by Jared Tarbell


Julie Hayes suggested making a collaborative ceramic tessellation piece.  We already 3D printed a "hat" cookie cutter shape.  So why not roll out a slab of clay, cut it into "hat" shapes, and get people to sculpt a design in each piece -- say at Tumbleroot bar and Pottery Pub in Santa Fe, where they let patrons sculpt while they drink beer.  Then we could piece everything together to make a bigger collaborative tessellation mosaic:

CARVE-IT -- Tessellation Prints at HECHO A MANO gallery
Download -- "hat-monotile-cookiecad.STL" (295.88 KB)
to 3D print a Tessellation cookie cutter



FISKARS FUSE
PORTABLE PRESS

We ordered a FISKARS FUSE CREATIVITY SYSTEM to be used as a portable press.  Since they no longer make them we had to order it through Ebay, and it came in on December 7, 2024:

We hope to use FISKARS FUSE CREATIVITY SYSTEM
as a relief press


The FISKARS FUSE folds up
and has a carrying handle

The FISKAR FUSE system is made for embossing -- but not for printmaking.  However we can add a print bed and easily convert it to a portable printing press, as Mark Zepezauer did at the Southwest Print Fiesta 2024:
 
The FISKARS FUSE 
converted into a printing press


The more portable the press, the easier it is to spontaneously print anywhere -- and more 8x8 inch prints will be made -- such as individual tessellation prints.  The FISKARS FUSE is portable in that it folds up and has a carrying handle.  However it might be too heavy to carry long distances.  

On the other hand, the heavy rollers will probably make better and more consistent prints.


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Laser Cutting "Hat" Tessellation Tiles

We are laser cutting the EinStein "hat" tiles from 12 x 18 inch plates of unmounted linoleum that we buy at Takach Press in Albuquerque.  The longest part is exactly 7 inches wide:



The "hat" tiles have to be
7 inches at the widest part


FILES for DOWNLOAD
 
SINGLE Tiles

MULTIPLE Tiles

Vector files for a 12 x 18 inch linoleum plate (though I think these files have to be resized so that the tiles are 7 inches at the widest):

Of course one has to adjust the power, speed and number of passes for each individual laser cutter.


TROTEC

We laser cut 7 tiles per sheet in three minutes, with two passes, on a Trotec laser cutter in Albuquerque, on November 13, 2024.  We could get 7 "hats" after making the tile edges share cuts:

tessellation_hat_7.SVG
Squeezing 7 "hat" tiles from 
a 12x18 inch sheet of linoleum


The Trotec laser cutter


The SVG file in Adobe Illustrator


We got 57 "hat" tiles
from 8 sheets of linoleum (12x18 inches)


TUCSON

DON CUE laser cut the linoleum we sent to Xerocraft makerspace in Tucson:

Don Cue is the Laser Shop Manager
at Xerocraft in Tucson

He managed to laser cut 6 tiles, with one pass, from the 12x18 inch sheets of linoleum that we sent him from Takach Press in Albuquerque:

Laser cutting 6 tiles
from a 12x18 inch sheet of linoleum

7 inches at the widest part


Making "hat" tiles at Xerocraft makerspace
on their 80 watt Monoport laser cutter


The 6 tile layout
in LightBurn software

The stack of "hat" tiles
made from 8 sheets of 12x18 inch linoleum

The stack of tiles are for JOE MARSHALL of the Heart of the Sun studio/gallery.  He is starting up the EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Print project in TUCSON:

Joe Marshall is starting up the tessellation project
from his studio in Tucson


Joe cut down the first batch of linoleum that we gave him by hand:

Joe Marshall cut these "hat" linocuts
by hand


QUELAB
 in ALBUQUERQUE

We laser cut the first tiles at Quelab makerspace in Albuquerque in May 2024.  The laser cutter was out of focus, so I could only get good cuts in the middle of the bed, and had to cut one at a time. Moreover the air assist was kinked and did not work for the first cuts, but we fixed that soon:


7inch_hat_square.LBRN2
The air assist did not work properly
with the first laser cuts at Quelab


We set the Quelab laser cutter to 100% power, 25 speed, and 7 passes.  Later after cleaning the laser lens, I reduced the passes down to 3:

Settings on the Quelab laser cutter

I only get 4 "hat" tiles when I use the Quelab laser cutter:

Experimenting on the 12x18 inch sheet of linoleum


The first batch of linocuts was ugly,
with frayed edges as the laser did not cut everything
all the way through

  • We also left linoleum sheets in El Paso and Silver City to be laser cut into "hats"


EXQUISITE TESSELLATION
 PRINT Project

We hand the linocut "hats" out to other artists to carve by hand -- and then we piece the tiles together to make larger collaborative tessellation prints.  We call this the EXQUISITE TESSELLATION Print project, after the surrealist game of EXQUISITE CORPSE:

EXQUISITE TESSELLATION print
made at Hecho A Mano gallery in Santa Fe


EXQUISITE TESSELLATION print
made during the Southwest Print Fiesta
in Silver City, New Mexico

We also post the individual tessellation prints on a blog:


We post the individual tessellations on a blog


CONCEPT

This "hat" shape was discovered by DAVID SMITH in England, and has only been known for about two years -- known as "an APERIODIC MONOTILE".  This is the solution to the "Einstein Problem," as it is a single shape that will tessellate infinitely without ever making a regular pattern (like the number "pi").  

This YouTube video below by Dr Ben Miles explains the concept better than I can:

A box of our "hat" tessellations,
next to a MC Escher tessellation lizard
on 4th Street in the Barelas neighborhood of Albuquerque

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