Tessellation Fish Eat Fish Page

This tessellation painting depicts a fish design which was started in 1973 and has evolved through many different subjects into the fish design. My first assignment as a freshman in Wayne Taylor’s basic design class, at North Carolina State University, School of Design resulted in a tessellation design of The Cats which is also offered as a print on this website.

This fish design was originally created for a T-Shirt company in Gainesville in 1995. Although I have been designing these tessellation patterns for over 30 years. I first learned of this new big word from an elementary grade student who visited my booth at a sidewalk art show and told me it was a “tessellation”. Before that, I had always called it a static packing unit design.

The word tessellation is derived from the greek word "tesseres" which in English means "four" describing the squares which were used to make mosaic art work in ancient days. The mathemeticians use the word "tesselation" to describe a shape which is repeated across a surface without leaving any gaps between the shapes.

Last year the Levy County, Florida school system asked me to develop a teaching unit on tessellation design and teach it to the children throughout the county in order that they may be able to draw a good free-form tessellation. Although the local math teachers were much better than me at teaching the geometry of these designs, I had developed a very simple, original technique to generate these patterns and along with the guidance of several of the math teachers in the county, we were able to get the children to be real tessellators (that’s a new word I just made up).

This numbered limited edition giclee print is $ 25. Free Shipping and is signed by the artist (me, Mike Segal) and is printed with permanent inks on 8.5 in. x 11 in. acid free paper. It comes hand-mounted in our studio by Marvi, in an 11 in. x 14 in. acid free white Bainbridge® mat on an 11 in. x 14 in. foam core backing board. The window opening on the mat is 7.5 in. x 9.5 in. This print is ready to frame in a standard 11 in. x 14 in. frame.