Regular Tetrahedrons

My latest thing has been regular tetrahedrons. My goal is to eventually make these from stainless steel.

I spent some time creating a 3D model of a regular tetrahedron in Fusion 360. Then I 3D printed a few for sanity check. Next up was to make some of these from 3mm Baltic Birch. Each tetrahedron requires laser cutting 4 equilateral triangles from birch plywood. Then a sanding jig is used to sand each of the 3 edges of each triangle to the correct beveled angle so that each side can be joined the other sides with no gap.

Finally a glue up jig is used to hold the sides easily for assembly. The basic assembly step (laser cutting, bevelling, glue up) of one tetrahedron takes about about 5 minutes per Tetrahedron

Preparing each tetrahedron to use as an art surface requires additional surface prep time. Any cracks are filled with wood filler, then each side is sanded and all the four surfaces are Gessoed in preparation for painting.

Each Tetrahedron provides four perfect surfaces for creating miniature art pieces. Groupings of tetrahedrons builds larger pieces. The possibilities for repeating patterns are endless in both 2D and 3D spaces. I am looking forward to exploring the possibilities of this space.

Threaded Portrait

I came across the work of Petros Vrellis via the 2016 hackaday.com post "Computer-Designed Portraits, Knit by Hand" I was instantly drawn to the hand sketched look of these exquisite pieces.  I knew that I had to try his technique for myself.

An excellent writeup of Petros Vrellis process is found on his site at A New Way To Knit.

Petros did not go into detail on his algorithm for generating the threading algorithm.   Vancouver Hack Space member Dan Royer helped out with providing his own implementation of this weaving algorithm.   

You can find Dan's version of the  Portrait Thread Weaving Code on Github

You can also watch Dan's algorithm in action on his Youtube video.

Dan runs a company and website called https://www.marginallyclever.com which is a great resource for DIY robots and robot generated art.

ThreadPortrait_3500med - 1.jpg

I have a new found respect for Petros Vrellis having experienced the amount of work that goes into producing one of these pieces.  The preparation time for the bicycle rim with drilling two hundred holes and attaching paperclip hooks plus the time it takes to thread a wheel is not insignificant.  There is also the time spent fine tuning your images and learning what will work and what will not.  I liken this process to exposing and printing an image in a darkroom.  You're not quite sure what you will get until it is printed.  This piece took me well over 40 hours to figure out and complete. 

Lee Jeffries Homeless Person Portrait Series

Lee Jeffries has an incredible series of photos that he's taken of homeless people.  Two of his photos were the inspiration and subject for two of my paper cuts and associated acrylic renderings.

For more of Lee Jeffries work please see http://leejeffries.500px.com/homeless