Fellow artist Daniel Prendergast threw down the gauntlet: how about using 3D printing to create three-dimensional wall art?
I’d already made some metal sculptural wall artworks such as Bob, Labyrinth and Shade and Shadow, but Dan’s idea was intriguing. 3D printing is a perfect way to create lightweight artwork that can easily be hung. My mind and fingers – the latter tickling the keyboard as I worked in CAD – got busy.
In addition to being lightweight, 3D printing makes it easy to simply 3D print (or not print) an opening in the back of each sculpture so it can be easily hung. That sure beats having to attach some sort of hanging mechanism!
The first 3D-printed wall art I created was a doozy: Barnacle (right). Only 6″ wide, the sculpture sticks out 10-1/2″ inches. Made of red translucent filament, its thin “fins” let light play through. Its points reinforce its potential power, similar to a real barnacle, even if the form itself is more stalactite than sea creature. This sculpture definitely has to be hung high on a wall so as not to “reach out” and poke someone. (Now that would be a story: “How did you lose your eye again?!”)
Monagram(left) is another wall piece, albeit a more balanced design. Its clear translucent filament (I love these translucents – can you tell?) is relatively low profile and its elements are subtle. Its thicks and thins don’t shout but rather whisper to you as you look at it more closely, a prime example of my “simply complex” aesthetic. Like most translucent sculptures, when you light it liberally, Monogram jumps off the wall.
Ironically, the latest 3D-printed wall sculpture I’ve created, Redline(right), is a combination of the red translucent and clear translucent filaments. It’s a coincidence – except that I really do love these translucents! Redline features a translucent red underpinning with a clear translucent upper of linked pyramidical forms. The red “bleeds” through the clear translucent filament to present a fascinating color neither red nor clear but some amalgam that makes you want to get closer and figure out how and what it is (again, “simply complex”).
Changing the orientation with these sculptures has been eye opening. It’s amazing how simply presenting them vertically changes how they are seen. There will undoubtedly be more 3D-printed wall sculptures in my future (and, perhaps, yours?).
