Sand Dollars, Echinodermata, and Radiolaria: Sculptural Forms from Hyperbolic Tessella

As a sculptor, I am interested in creating physical objects that are novel, natural, strongly self-coherent, and convey a sense of "structural inevitability." In my work, I use a variety of mathematical ideas and physical materials, often leading to biologically inspired forms.  In the work presented here, I realize visions for structures that are similar to forms in the echinoderm family, but happen not to exist in nature. Two basic ideas are repeatedly employed. First, hyperbolic tessellations in the Poincaré disc are transformed (in various ways) to three-dimensional networks of edges. Then these edge networks are thickened to solid struts and smoothed. The designs are fabricated via 3D printing and then hand dyed with water color techniques to produce gradients of color.