Bathsheba Grossman is an artist exploring how math, science and sculpture interconnect. Her work is about life in three dimensions, symmetry and balance, and always finding beauty in geometry. These are three excellent examples of her work. The Gyroid is a triply periodic minimal surface and was discovered by Alan Schoen. The artist then used Mathematica and Kenneth Brakke's Surface Evolver to compute this section of it, adding her own perforations. The Quintrino is a dodecahedral shape with a large and hidden inner volume. Using a variety of modeling techniques and tools the design of these shapes is created using CAD software. The next stage is to get them from a virtual model to a physical object - this is accomplished by direct-metal printing. The design is laid down, one layer at a time, in stainless-steel powder, held in place by a laser-activated binder. You can see the remnants of the layering on the finished pieces and each layer is .004" to .007" thick. The piece then goes into an oven, where heat drives off the binder and fuses the steel powder that was used during the printing process. This produces a porous steel sculpture that's about 60% dense. The next phase is to get rid of the porosity by replacing the airspace that remains in the piece with liquid bronze. To do this the sculpture is heated again, and special stems that protrude from the piece are dipped in a crucible of molten bronze. Capillary action causes the bronze to wick throughout the piece. Impossible as it seems, the end result is a composite metal that's fully dense with properties intermediate between steel and bronze.
Gyroid is a 1 3/8" cube and the Quintrino is 1 5/8" diameter.