Jos de Mey has died

With deep regret I should report that in December 22th 2007 the great man and the famous Belgian artist Jos de Mey has died.

He was one of the most famous artists in imp-art. His name have always been referred along with another Holland artist M.C. Escher. Jos de Mey was the unique artist, who could organic combine detailed photo realistic Flemish landscapes with complex impossible constructions. His artwork were demonstrated at many personal and group exhibitions in Belgium and other countries.

I believe he will be always remembered in many countries, and his works will be great theme of inspiration for many artists around the world.

Escher's creature

This series of photos by Hawken King was inspired by creatures from Escher's artworks "House of stairs" and "Curl up". A small strange creature should curl to move forward.

Below you can see the original Escher's image "Curl up", where moving of this created is shown in four steps.

Celtic Möbius strip by Paul Bielaczyc

Celtic Möbius

by Paul Bielaczyc

Colored Pencil and Ink, 21" x 13".

In this image by Paul Bielaczyc we see joining of aspects of artist's life. As he says Celtic knots surround him in his job, M.C. Escher who has always bee inspiring in his art and the Möbius strip as intriguing mathematical form.

Tessellations by Daniel Wyllie

Daniel Wyllie creates wonderful tessellations, which got First prize in Tess Contest 2006 and Grand prize in Tess Contest 2007. His tesselations are designed in classic Escher style with animals, faces a other artistic figures as main characters.

Grand prize in Tess Contest 2007

Coworkers

Last Laugh

Mad dog

First prize in Tess Contest 2006

Faces In a Flower

Stork And Cougar

Kaleidocycles

Kaleidocycle consists of at least 6 tetrahedrons joined into chain, which head connected to it's tail. In the case of at least 8 tetrahedra it has the interesting property that it can be turned through its center in a continuous motion.

In the book "M.C.Escher kaleidocycles" (1977) the mathematician Doris Schattschneider and the graphic designer Wallace Walker showed how to cover kaleidocycles continuously with repeating patterns designed by Dutch artist M.C. Escher. It should be noted that in the work of Escher himself kaleidocycles do not appear.

Below you can see two examples of kaleidocycles decorated with Escher's tessellations.

The most comprehensive site about kaleidocycles is http://www.kaleidocycles.de/

Tesselation World of Makoto Nakamura

Who said that there's no masters of tessellation art after Escher? Just look on artworks by Japanese artist Makoto Nakamura. Pay attention to areas of the image, which are filled with identical figures that show dolphins, sea gulls, flying fishes and other figures. Put together all these figures constitute complete image, which looks as a single whole and don't fall to pieces.

Like in Escher's "Metamproses" or in "Sky and Water" tessellated figures transfer from one to another.

Below you can see some other tessellated images by Makoto Makamura.

Staircase knot

This strange composition of staircase reminds Möbius strip, but unlike Möbius strip this figure has two sides. So someone, who will try to rise this stairs, will continue rising infinitely returning to the starting point.

The sculpture also reminds one of the famous Escher's images "Knots". One of the them you can see below. This knot is also not a Möbius strip, because it has four sides.

Escher's building in origami

Some people redraw Escher's artworks with computer, the others create woodcarvings based on Escher's lithographs, but Ingrid Siliakus crates Escher's buildings using paper. I don't know how this kind of art can be called. I think it's a branch of origami.

UPDATE (thanks to lispnik):

This kind of art is called kirigami that is variation of origami, where the artist is allowed to make small cuts in the paper.

Below you can see some Escher-like kirigami works with respective originals.

Balcony

Relativity

Convex and concave

These images are close to originals by M.C. Escher. More such style origami constructions can be seen here http://haha.nu/amazing/unique-paper-cut-artworks/

This beadwork named "Rainbow Lei" was created by Laura Shea. It composed of individual and compound frame bead polyhedra and explores a color progression of the spectrum. The lei consists of individual dodecahedra, truncated icosahedra, and twenty-five 'Eureka' beads. The 'Eureka' beads each have an underlying truncated icosahedron serving as the matrix for twelve dodecahedra growing from the pentagonal faces of the truncated icosahedron. A chain of dodecahedra form the pentagonal loop and bar toggle. The single-needle thread path through each polyhedron is a continuous spiral.

Triangle vortex

A nice rendering of triangle vortex was found at forum WooYah, which was created by member Heidi. This image is interesting by shapes of triangles, which look like Penrose tribar, but they are not. If looking attentively we see that these triangles are more distorted than classic Penrose triangle. So these figures cannot be named 'impossible' because they don't make sense possible figure. It sounds paradoxically, but all impossible figures makes sense common possible object at first glance.

Below you can see another rendering with the same kind of triangle.

Trigonometric art By Fergus Ray Murray

Created by Fergus Ray Murray images above are not fractals. They show us beauty of trigonometry. Every such image consists of set of sine and cosine curves, which makes complex wave frozen in still image.

You can see more trigonometric images and wonderful mathematical animations at the Fergus's website.

Escher spheres

Some Escher's tessellated images can be adopted to spherical surface. First of all it is concerned to his lithographs which show hyperbolic space such as "Angels and Devils", "Circle limit IV" etc. Above left is the original lithograph "Angels and Devils" and above right is the wooden spherical interpretation of it.

There's regular way to transformation hyperbolic geometry to spherical geometry. You can read it here http://plus.maths.org/issue18/xfile/.

Other Escher's tessellations also can be applied to sphere. You can see some examples below.
The last three images were found here.

New artwork by Jos de Mey

Yesterday, I received a pack with artworks by Jos de Mey. Above you can see the latest artwork by him. As usual, there's impossible figure on his artwork. He is my favorite artist in the field of impossible art.

Black cube by Gregor Schneider

German sculptor Gregor Schneider was fascinated by artwork "Black square", which was created by famous russian artist Kasismir Malevich, and he decided to create an analogue of it as sculpture.

Firstly, he tried to represent 15-metres high black cube in 2005 and was erected in Venice at International Art Exhibition - La Biennalle de Venezia. It was named "Cube Venice 2005". But his application was rejected by Venice authority for politic reasons because they were afraid to offend muslims who could consider it as recostruction of the holiest place of Islam - Kaaba, which is at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca.

In 2006 Gregor Schneider with his cube was invited to exhibition in Berlin Museum of Modern Art. He renaimed it to "Cube Berlin 2006". But his participation in the exhibition was rejected again at the last moment by the general director of Berlin public museums.

Nadeem Elyas, the president of the central Muslim coulcil in Germany, advocated the cube, and finally, 14-metres high sculpture of black cube have found its place before Museum of Modern Art in Hamburg.

Rapid prototyping sculptures

George Hart is active using rapid prototyping (RP) technology for modeling sculptures.

Rapid Prototyping or Solid Freeform Fabrication refers to a range of new technologies which construct physical three-dimensional objects by assembling thin layers of material under computer control. Objects can be made which are extremely accurate, complex, and beautiful, and which no other technology can produce.

The image left shows he and his model of Sierpinski triangle.

He also interested in four-dimensional geometry. From a 4D object, one can calculate 3D "shadows" which are often beautiful but very complex objects.

The image below shows a 4D structure made of 120 regular dodecahedra. This "shadow" of it has the form of one large dodecahedron filled in with 119 smaller dodecahedra. In 4D all the dodecahedra are regular, but in this 3D shadow, angles are necessarily distorted, so only the innermost and outermost dodecahedra appear regular.

Even more beautiful and intricate is the truncated 120-cell, a 4D object made of 120 truncated dodecahedra and 600 tetrahedra.

Below is two variants of a woven assemblage of Salamanders, in homage to M.C. Escher. The left image is a rapid prototype and right image is a laser-cut wooden sculpture.