I keep hoping for bad weather. Bad weather would give me an excuse to huddle inside during the daylight hours, finish some art projects, maybe engage my kid in board games or Lego modeling. Alas, while the rest of North America is getting the foo walloped out of it, the weather here is consistently pleasant: clear skies, temperatures in the sixties or seventies during the daytime. That’s about to be a problem, since the record lack of rainfall here and dearth of snow in the Sierras will lead to a nasty drought. Water rationing is ahead, methinks, along with my shambling out to the garden with buckets of water salvaged from luxurious two minute showers.
I’m getting some stitching done nevertheless, although the work on the skin is tedious. I break up work/stretching cycles by listening to NPR or TED talks. Thus, the section outlined in green occurred during NPR Fresh Air’s “Klansville, U.S.A.” (37 minutes), and the section outlined in blue occurred during Luke Syson’s TED talk (13 minutes). And here I go focussing on the “how” (number of stitches, number of spools of thread used, techniques) rather than the “why” (drive behind the artwork). Perhaps the how is simply easier to talk about than the why.
While working, it occurred me that I’d really like to see a book which focussed on fiber art series, each artist showing 5-6 works in a particular series and talking about the “why”. Not a guide to working in series, not a how-to or exercise book, but rather a gallery in which people talked about their series. If someone could bribe Martha Sielman to create this book, I’d buy a copy. She’s done a wonderful job on the Art Quilt Portfolio series, as well as the Masters: Art Quilts books.
I stumbled across this the other day while cleaning my desk. Do you know what it is?
It’s an early 3D print, a functioning roller bearing. As in, it was printed out in this form with contained bearings. It was made by, I think, infusing layers of cornstarch with CA (Cyanoacrylate). Z Corporation was handing them out at SIGGRAPH, circa ’95 or ’99. (Yes, it is true. I don’t clean my desk very often.)
I remember watching their print head splutter back and forth across a bed of white powder, and realizing the possibilities. Yes, this particular roller bearing might be made of cornstarch and might not be particularly strong or operate smoothly. However, the potential was there. The potential for individuals to prototype or fabricate whatever was in their dreams.
Now, some fifteen or twenty years later, 3d printers are becoming mainstream. My local library has one. HP is muttering about making one. For a few hundred dollars, you can make one. Artists and tinkerers use them to create sculptures or Lego components. There’s talk about sending 3D printers on space missions so as to print spare parts or, for all I know, food. People have models of their fetuses printed to commemorate their pregnancies. There’s ongoing research in printing replacement organs for people, organs based on the person’s own cells. Imagine that, being able to print a new liver or kidney which wouldn’t be rejected, instead of waiting for a donation with all that that implies.
Under the category of TMI, or more than you ever wanted to know about me, here’s a 3D print commissioned by my dentist. I had some work-related stress which led to grinding and cracking my molars. That in turn led to dental visits and crowns. Even if one has a marvelous dentist, which I do (drop me an email if you’re in Silicon Valley and you want a referral), getting a crown isn’t fun. My dentist would do what he could to make it less ghastly, including plopping headphones on me so I could listen to music as he worked. However, there would still be a mouth full of nasty dental alginate while a mold was made, as well as drool. Lots and lots of drool.
Not anymore.
The last time I needed a crown, Dr. Smith got out a scanning wand. In a matter of minutes, my mouth had been scanned and a 3D computer model was made of my teeth. He sent the model off to a lab where a 3D print was made of the relevant area, then a mold to fabricate a crown. Fast, accurate, less annoying. No slobbery alginate! He even let me keep the 3D print. Any time I feel the urge to grind my teeth, I can do it with the 3D print instead of the teeth in my mouth.
That is the power of 3D printing, the power of 3D imaging period. I think that, increasingly, 3D visualization will be a good skill for people to have.
My Pinewood Derby car
It doesn’t all have to be about printing Klein bottles or fabricating parts for astronauts on their way to Mars. Here’s a Pinewood Derby car I made, which was based on a 3D model. It’s hard to get much more mundane than that!
The boy’s car
The Pinewood Derby is a race held for Cub Scouts. The boys carve cars from chunks of wood, then send these monstrosities careening madly down a track whilst hooting at each other. My son knew he wanted his car to be a coffin on wheels, but what should I make for the other car, the one to be entered in the family race?
Enter the 3D program. I made a virtual block of wood, the same size as the block issued in Pinewood Derby kits, then began messing with it. I didn’t know what I was trying to make, but I had a general idea of narrowing the body behind the front tires and tapering the front and the back. As I altered the block digitally, it dawned on me that it looked a bit like an ant! Well, why not?
After just a bit more work refining the top and side cross sections, I arrived at some drawings that I could paste on the side of the wood block, then cut out on the band saw.
Here’s the final product, which I’ve dubbed the Mandiblur. (“Mandible” from the fact it’s an ant + “blur”, a touch of optimistic hubris.) It really is quite handy to be able to visualize things before you build them.
Here’s some other work I’ve been doing, although it’s not original. These are from some (free!) video tutorials offered by Little Web Hut, the artistic equivalent of slavishly duplicating a quilt from somebody else’s pattern. I encourage anyone who has the least bit of interest in learning Blender to go check these tutorials out. The speaker has a clear, well-organized style.
Rendered view
Wireframe for comparison, to drive home the fact that this is an object and image we’ve created on the computer.
Rendered view
Wireframe for comparison
The one with the peppers amuses me. I’m not sure what the backstory is, why we’re hurling virtual peppers into a tank of virtual water, but it made for an interesting simulation. Maybe they’re dirty peppers, peppers we picked or purchased, and we happened to have an aquarium full of water standing by for just such an occasion. Yes, I think about such things. (Evidently it runs in the family, too. Last night my son asked my husband about a cartoon character, “Why is he able to shoot laser beams out of his eyes?” My husband looked at him incredulously. “Let’s get this straight. We have a cartoon character who’s a giant bearded package of french fries, and you’re asking me whether it makes sense that he can shoot laser beams out of his eyes?”)
I made these in Blender 3D, a 3D modeling and animation package which is free for the download. Some denigrate the software but, you know, it’s free and has tons of features. I’m sure its competitors such as Maya are very nice, but Maya costs a few thousand dollars. I can stay busy for quite awhile with the features in Blender.
Where I may be headed … I’ve always loved working in 3D. It’s utterly enchanting to be able to bring the worlds, the ideas in one’s head, to life. I may want to experiment with printing some renders on fabric and augmenting them with stitch. It’s a natural progression from my modus operandi of painting on fabric and stitching over the paintings. Really, though, it depends on the style of the render and whether stitching adds anything.
One obvious corollary is people printing photos on fabric and stitching over them. Alas, I’ve seen very few examples of quilted photos on fabric that I’ve cared for. There is some wonderful work out there which was informed by photography. Mardal and Hougs’ stitched fiber paintings come to mind, as do Jayne Gaskins’ and Carol Shinn’s densely stitched, photorealistic images.
Alas, many examples of stitched photography suffer from muddy hues, poor dynamic range, badly composed photos, poor image editing, and the stitch remaining a separate, jarring visual layer from the imagery. The latter is perhaps the greatest “sin” in my mind, rendering the whole exercise moot. The stitch contributes nothing. It’s as though a four-year-old shoved an 8×10 through a sewing machine: there is no unified whole.
That might not be an issue in the case of, say, making an editorial statement. For example, if one stitched horns over the forehead of a reviled politician, that would constitute a statement even if the stitch layer remained jarringly separate. By and large, though, that isn’t what’s happening.
Thus, we shall see if my experiment in printing renders on fabric then augmenting them with stitch pans out. I may very well end up with some expensive, laboriously created liners for the dog’s bed!