Exhibits and Featured Art

Part of the traveling Polyplanes installation, made possible by Studio Infinity and the Seattle Universal Math Museum. Recent installations at Joint Math Meetings, San Francisco, California, January 2024; MathFest, Tampa, Florida, August 2023; The College of New Jersey, July 2023; and Rugters University, Studio Infinity, April 2023.

In collaboration with JMU student Carolyn Angelillo, this model is a durable version of a design from our Catlan wireframe series. Designed using Mathematica, MeshLab, and TopMod, and 3D printed on an Ultimaker S3. 

Juried Art Exhibition, Bridges Conference Halifax, 2023. 

By creating large-scale soft sculptures, we are able to invite people to physically engage with mathematical knots and links. These physical sculptures required very long tubes of knitted fabric which were knitted in segments with a vintage Brother KH-260 knitting machine and finished by hand. The form and tube-length of each knot was determined using published mathematical results on ideal ropelength and tight knot conformations. Worsted weight knitted yarn stuffed with polyester fiber fill. 

West Elm collaboration with Patrick Cain Designs studio, Los Angeles, 2022-23.
See this at West Elm

For the computational biologists who created/discovered the Scutoid, the key property of the shape is that it can combine with itself and other geometric objects like frustums to create 3D packings of epithelial cells. This model consists of two pieces that together pack together exactly. Designed using OpenSCAD code and Fusion360 blueprints, then produced in light-weight recycled concrete by Patrick Cain Designs.

Photograph and description of this 3D design was featured as the March page of the widely-circulated Mathematical Imagery Calendar, American Mathematical Society, 2021.

This model illustrates a continuous morphing between the two knot conformations known as the Perko Pair.  Each knot in the morph was extracted from KnotPlot, Laplacian thinned in Meshlab, Catmull-Clark remeshed in TopMod, and then arranged, scaled, and painted with color in Meshmixer. 3D printed in full color with powder and binder jetting. 

Cover of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, Volume 67, Number 11, December 2020.
See this Notices issue

A model of the Arneodo chaotic attractor, designed with Matlab and OpenSCAD using the mixed curvature method described in the article "Modeling Dynamical Systems for 3D Printing" (Lucas, Sander, Taalman). 3D printed in SLS nylon, and photographed by Edmund Harriss.

With Steve Lucas and JMU student Abigail Eget, Juried Art Exhibition, Bridges Conference Aalto, 2020*. 

We have optimized a family of tritangentless trefoils to obtain the best rolling knots in terms of vertical center of mass variation. In this interactive work, people are invited to roll 3D printed models of these optimized rolling knots along a board and physically experience their horizontal center of mass variations as the models "rock and roll" down an inclined board.

Juried Art Exhibition during the Construct 3D Conference at Rice University; Flatland Gallery, Houston, TX, February 2020.

In this series, we present nine Stainless Steel 3D printed knot conformations:  Tritangentless Trefoil, Figure Eight Stick Knot, Cinquefoil Lattice, 5_2 Lissajous, 6_2 Petal Knot, two (7,2) Torus Knots, 8_19 Hyperboloid Stick Knot, and a Midway Perko Knot. Knot conformations were chosen based on key properties of each knot from the literature. Designed with OpenSCAD as well as Mathematica, Blender, and Knotplot. 3D printed with direct metal laser sintering in 60% Stainless Steel, 40% Bronze.

Women Making with Math Exhibition, Dana Hall Art Gallery, Wellesley, MA, December 2019.

In collaboration with mathematician Steve Lucas, this collection provides physical, tangible 3D models inpired by the beautiful 2D renders created by artist and photographer Phillipe Put. Our method takes as input a set of differential equations and initial values, produces a sequence of datapoints in MATLAB spaced by curvature constraints, and “sweeps” that data into a curve-surrounding polyhedron in OpenSCAD. 3D printed with SLA resin and supports.

Juried exhibition at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research Mathematics, Brown University, 2019.

This knot conformation is halfway between “Perko A” and “Perko B”, the two knots in the Rolfsen knot table that were famously shown to be equivalent by Kenneth Perko in 1973. Extrusions were added to each mesh face in the model to create spikes that highlight the path of the knot through three-dimensional space. Designed with KnotPlot and TopMod, optimized for 3D printing with Cura. 3D printed with FDM in yellow Polylactic Acid and custom supports.

With sculpture artist Ashely Zelinskie, and designer and textile researcher Francesca Rodriguez Sawaya; International Contemporary Art Festival at Art.MO, Monumental Callou, FUGAZ Residency in Lima, Peru, April 2018.

Inspired by knot language and Peruvian textile designs, this installation invites everyone to add an encrypted message to the bridge. The language, created specifically for this installation, is inspired by the old record system Quipu, morse code, binary and hexadecimal, and allows participants to encrypt letters in knotted forms.

With designer and technologist Alicia Tam Wei as AABSTRACT Studio, NYC x DESIGN Week 2016; selected for exhibition at the American Design Club's Growth show from May 7-11, 2016 at Astor Place in NYC, and Wanted Design's Manhattan exhibition from May 13-16, 2016.

Our Type9 series is inspired by the story of amateur mathematician Marjorie Rice. In 1975, Rice read an article by Martin Gardner in Scientific American about tessellating pentagons, of which only 8 had been identified, developed her own unique system of notation, and discovered 4 more, the first of which is used for this design. 

Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, part of the Tom Burtonwood exhibition Transmissions, Mount Vernon, IL, February-May 2016

A series of low-voxel bunnies created with a combination of Minecraft and standard 3D design tools, a playful interpretation of the classic "Stanford Bunny" test model.