3D printer artists

9 Artists Who Are Killing It With Custom 3D Printing

Wait! Don’t trash that egg sandwich. There’s an artist who can use it in her next contemporary fresco. And if you’re not going to reuse that screw. . .hand it over. Andrew Meyers might want it for his portrait of Princess Di. Artists are known for pushing boundaries and for disrupting our eyeballs by using unconventional materials. But no disruption can compare with the increasing number of artists using custom 3D printing to bring their creations to life. The growing popularity of this medium has lead to a question that is bothering some within the industry: Is it even considered art?

It’s a question that’s much older than 3D printing itself. Artists have continually employed new and unusual vehicles for their creations. In the case of 3D printing, embedded within the philosophical debate about what defines art, is another question, “Does 3D printing make art too easy?” After looking at the ingenious and tedious efforts of the following nine artists, you can decide the answers to both questions.

Don’t Tell These Nine Their Work Ain’t Art

These artists are thinking outside the proverbial and overused “box.” Their work not only employs 3D printing technology, which is original in its own right, but they use the technology in innovative ways or to break through the limitations of traditional processes.

1. Tomoko Nagao

Tomoko Nagao is a Japanese artist who reinterprets Renaissance masterpieces. In 2017, she strayed from her traditional oil and stencils on walls and canvases and traveled further back in time to create two micro-pop sculptures with a large 3D printer. Her Salome exhibit, 3D printed by Sisma Italia, put a funny spin on a biblical story and bridged an ancient event with modern technology.

2. Neri Oxman

Neri Oxman is an architect, designer, internationally recognized artist, and professor at the MIT Media Lab. This PhD aims to push the limits of additive manufacturing using new materials like concrete and glass, and in fact even develops the machines to print them. Besides fashion wear and architecture, Neri uses 3D printing to create art.

3. Rob and Nick Carter

Rob and Nick Carter went back in time, too, but not to biblical times. They took a 400 year-old painting and recreated the scene outdoors. They used 3D printing to duplicate tree trunks. Nine of them. Then they bronzed each and placed them in a field. This real-life work is titled Bronze Oak Grove.

3D printing makes duplication easy and fast, but there are other reasons artists are turning to this technology.

4. Batsheba Grossman

Batsheba Grossman uses her mathematics background to create cool works of metal art. 3D printing allows her to produce the shapes she envisions, a feat impossible to achieve without the technology. Batsheba said, “If you show these to somebody who works in metal, they fall on the floor.”

Additive manufacturing, the more technical title for custom 3D printing, builds layer upon layer, allowing artists to create difficult curves, bends, and hollow points without the fear of damaging their work. What professional would not want to decrease risk in their work? What about being granted the the opportunity to create a greater range of designs?

5. Julian Voss-Andreae

Julian Voss-Andreae lives in Portland, Oregon, and creates larger-than-life outdoor monuments. 3D printing technology frees him to create arbitrary designs. Often, they are large format human figures, sometimes becoming invisible at different angles.

6. Dario Santacroce

Dario Santacroce is an Italian sculptor determined to create perfect forms. Traditional sculpting methods did not deliver the perfection he envisioned. The solution Dario sought lie in the preciseness of custom 3D design and printing. First, he created prototypes on his own MakerBot. Then, for the final work, he searched and found a printing company in Germany. Dario’s Spherical Creations interlock three spheres around an invisible triangle. And they’re perfect, thanks to 3D printing technology (and Dario’s determination).

7. Gilles Azzaro

Do you remember President Barack Obama’s speech hailing 3D printing? You missed it? Well here it is. Gilles Azzaro captured that segment of the President’s State of the Union address and turned the digital voiceprint into a work of art. Showing the peaks and valleys of Obama’s voice, and guided by a line of light in sync with the President’s voice, Azzaro’s Next Industrial Revolution creatively combines multiple senses.

8. Ona Sadkowsky

Contemporary urban artist, Ona Sadkowsky, likes to be creative in a more “naughty” way. Putting her pastel paints to the side, Ona sketched a provocative 3-dimensional piece for an annual art fair. She sent the sketch to Dekom 3D Plus in her hometown of Zurich where the Dekom team turned her sketch into a computer-generated 3-dimensional model. Then they printed it on their Massivit 1800 3D printer. The final product was an eye-catching character that was popular at the fair, drawing lots of attendees to take photos with it.

9. Nick Ervinck

Nick Ervinck is known for adding color to his complex 3D-printed works of art. He uses CAD software to design his art and then sends it out for printing.

Bonus #10. Eyal Gever

Eyal Gever employed large format 3D printing to create a miniature model of the castle he was commissioned to decorate with a digital light show. The 4-meter long replica, seen above his desk, saved the artist from flying to the location to test and perfect his work before the actual show.

Growth in 3D Printed Art

3D printing technology is spreading, not only across more and more industries but within the art industry itself. With this growth, comes an increasing number of options for printing your work. There are desktop 3D printers, 3D printing hubs, and large format 3D printers available for your giant creations. With that in mind, to all the artists out there we say, Ask not what you can create with 3D printing, but Where will you have your next work printed?

Tell us about your experiences creating 3D art in the comments below.

3D Printing Artists

Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes. More and more artists and specifically sculptors are making use of this technology. This is a list of 3D printing artists that I will keep adding to:

Marco Mahler and Henry Segerman

A collection of 3D printed mobiles, the result of a collaboration between Marco Mahler, a kinetic sculptor specializing in mobiles, and Henry Segerman, a research fellow in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Melbourne. Designed in the spring of 2013, they appear to be the first fully 3d printed mobiles in the world.

Joshua Harker

Joshua Harker is a well-known American artist and considered a pioneer & visionary in 3D printed art & sculptures. His sculpture Crania Anatomica Filigre holds the record for the most-funded kickstarter sculpture project. His work is among nearly 3000 collections that include work from notable artists such as Andy Warhol, Ron English, Shepard Fairey, R. Crumb, & Robert Williams.

Bathsheba Grossman

Bathsheba Grossman is an artist from Santa Cruz, California who creates sculptures in bronze and stainless steel. 3D printing is her main medium but she also works with subsurface laser damage in glass. She defines herself as an artist exploring the region between art and mathematics. Her work is about life in three dimensions: working with symmetry and balance, getting from the origin to infinity, and always finding beauty in geometry.

Nervous System

Nervous System is a generative design studio that works at the intersection of science, art, and technology. We create using a novel process that employs computer simulation to generate designs and digital fabrication to realize products. Drawing inspiration from natural phenomena, we write computer programs based on processes and patterns found in nature and use those programs to create unique and affordable art, jewelry, and housewares.

Theo Jansen

Theo Jansen is a Dutch kinetic artist. In 1990, he began what he is known for today: building large mechanisms out of PVC that are able to move on their own, known as Strandbeest, wind-walking examples of artificial life. The 3d printed versions of the kinetic sculptures are a great example of what 3D printing is ultimately capable of, and continue to evolve with the addition of a Propeller Propulsion system.

Eric van Straaten

Physical expressiveness in form and content is the biggest strength of the work of Eric van Straaten: while the sculptures remain to have a certain digital feel to them, the pieces contain a weirdly eroticized corporeality. Balancing on the edge of kitsch, the marzipan-like quality of the material resonates beautifully with the apparent innocence of the scenery.

Cosmo Wenman

Cosmo Wenman has a vision of digitally scanning masterpieces from museums all over the world, and making the resulting files and information freely available online. His goal is to allow anybody with a 3D printer to be able to reproduce these rare works of art in their own homes, or in the classroom. In fact, he already has several works of art that he has scanned available.

Nick Ervinck

Studio Nick Ervinck applies tools and techniques from new media in order to explore the aesthetic potential of sculpture, 3D print installations, architecture and design. Through his divergent practice, a strong fascination with the construction of space is noticeable. Not only does Nick focus on the autonomous sculptural object, he also questions its spatial positioning and points to the phenomenological experience and embodiment of space.

Linlin & Pierre-Yves Jacques

Linlin (from China) and Pierre-Yves (of French origin) are young artists who were able to blend their cultural differences and artistic skills to make create a partnership of unexpected creativity. These artists met many years ago during their art studies – she brought a master’s degree in digital design and he, a diploma in 3D video production. The chemistry between these two artists was immediate, creating works that are a tribute to nature, knowledge and human feelings.

Monika Horčicová

Monika Horčicová is one of the hottest emerging artists in the Czech Republic. Born in Prague, she currently resides in Brno where she studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology under the tutelage of Prof. Michal Gabriel. Her work explore themes of infinity; a repeated cycle of conception and death. Rather than looking at bones as a symbol of morbidity, she aims to show them as objects that can be beautiful when we view them properly.

Michaella Janse van Vuuren

Michaella Janse van Vuuren is a designer and artist with a PhD in Electrical Engineering. These diverse interests enable her to create sculptures that are technically complex and artistically competent, with a strong focus on design for 3D printing or additive manufacturing. She writes: “I love the challenge of creating something that is imagined and then designed on computer and seeing if my idea printed out as envisioned. The first time I hold the design in my hand is when the finished product comes out of the 3D printer.”

Louis Pratt

Louis Pratt’s approach to sculpture is novel and ground breaking. He starts by 3D scanning forms (people) from the real world into the digital world. With these digitized forms he then uses digital sculpture tools to manipulate the scanned data. He explores many types of algorithms and applies them to sculpture.The data is then rapid prototyped back from cyber space into the real world.

Isaie Bloch

Isaïe Bloch, founder of Ergatory, focuses his ongoing research and design ambitions on the correlation between craftsmanship and additive manufacturing within several creative domains including architecture, fashion and plastic arts. He has won the ‘Artist of the Year Award’ at the 2013 3D Printshow in London.

Gilles Azzaro

Gilles Azzaro, a French digital artist exposed his latest work at the 3D Printshow in London this year. The voice sculpture print: Barack Obama – Next Industrial Revolution. The 3D printed sculpture is the three-dimensional materialization of President Obama’s voice-print. The 3D voice-print portrays an extract of President Obama’s February 2013 State of the Union Address.

Lionel Theodore Dean

UK designer Lionel Theodore Dean believes in complexity. His objects are defiantly non-square, often pushing the boundaries of the functional object categories all industrial design adheres. Working with rapid prototyping techniques like laser sintering as a designer-in-residence at the University of Huddersfield, Dean realized that these methods were fully capable of producing high-quality objects fit for the consumer market.

Kevin Lee Willmorth

Lumenique, the art and design studio of Kevin Lee Willmorth, designs and creates sculptural portable lighting, with designs inspired by architecture and machinery, which includes lighted objects using 3D printing exclusively. In 2010, Kevin created 53 unique functioning SSL products in 52 weeks as an exercise in the creative use of technology. You can also find out more about his process on his blog.

I’ll be adding to this list over time …

If you’re a 3D print artist and would like to be added to this list, please contact me.

How 3D printers are used in contemporary art: 9 unusual examples

Many artists and sculptors have begun to use plastic in their work - a cheap and such a convenient material.

And if earlier with the help of high-quality Canon or Epson printers it was possible to simply print a sketch, then with the development of new technologies and the advent of 3D printers, the possibilities of artists have become wider.

3D printing and scanning is now used not only for entertainment or utilitarian purposes, but also in contemporary art. Moreover, in recent years, 3D printing has covered such areas as modeling parts for ships, cars, ATMs, shoes, and even organs!

Incredibly, by combining 3D printing and art, you can open the horizons of fantasy and create something unusual.

Ricardo Canedo Mondragon: 3D Sound Waves

Ricardo Canedo Mondragon has a passion for visualizing charts and sound waves, and this passion led him to bring his idea to life with print.

Michael Eden: Vases

Using semi-liquid clay, an English potter created an unusual collection of vases.

Chen Zhihe: Inkblots

Chen Zhihe, a graduate of China's Central Academy of Fine Arts, presented an unusual Ink Cloud project as her graduation thesis, depicting the meaning of traditional Chinese ink painting art and printing a digital 3D counterpart.

Hanna Socap: Insides Clothing Collection

A futuristic fashion collection presented by fashion designer Hanna Socap. And like a cherry on the cake - unusual accessories that complement the style are printed on a 3D printer.

Valeria Promohova: 7 Davidov

In the hands of designer Valeria Promohova, Michelangelo's David was reproduced and played with the help of 3D printing. Thus, 7 Davids were "assembled" from spirals, colors, curves and other interesting design elements.

Joshua Harker Skull with Wings

This unusual figurine was created and printed by designer Joshua Harker. As materials, he used compounds of nylon and glass, polyamide, connected with a laser.

Guille Azzaro: Sculpture of Barack Obama's Voice Recording

Guille Azzaro from Casablanca, who won the unusual title of voice sculptor, 3D printed a voice wave sculpture of Barack Obama's February 2013 address to the American people and was even invited to the White House by Obama himself in June 2014. In addition to this work, Azzaro also has a series of sculptures of voice recordings of other world leaders.

Nervous System: 3D Jewelery

Of course, 3D printing has also made its way into the fashion industry. American studio Nervous Systems from Massachusetts has developed an unusually sophisticated collection of Floraform jewelry using a 3D printer.

Lorna Bradshaw: 3D Printed Self Portraits

Graphic designer Lorna Bradshaw is a fan of sci-fi and wanted to share her passions with the world through her small art project, which includes printed figures of her own face.

Source

Possibilities of 3D printing: art, fashion, medicine

Sculpture by Monika Gorchikova (Czech Republic)

Expressive sculptures by contemporary artists, short guides to fashion shows, architectural models of the human body application of 3D printing was compiled by Artyom Dezhurko.

3D printing was invented by American Chuck Hull in 1984. Modern 3D printers are capable of printing large objects, up to a car body; and use different printing techniques (stereolithography invented by Chuck Hull is just one of them). However, whatever the technique may be, the essence is the same: the printer creates an object by building up the material in layers. Thus, you can create an arbitrarily complex shape. 3D printers print from different materials: plastic, cellulose, ceramics, metals, sugar.

This material is an illustrated overview of how 3D printing is currently used in various fields: art, architecture, technology, fashion, medicine.

Richard DuPont, USA

Nick Erwink, USA

"Princess", Eric van Straten, Netherlands

A modern 3D printer prints layers so thin that they can no longer be seen with the naked eye. Therefore, sculptors love it: 3D printing is the same casting, but technologically simplified and allowing endless replication of the object. Sculptures with her help are very different: from photographically accurate images of famous football players to the vicious postmodern statuettes of Eric van Straten.

Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger. Digital Grotesque, 2015

Study paper by Andy Zheng and Christina Eromenok at RPI School of Architecture

PTW Architects. Model of the Beijing National Water Sports Center, 2007

Most often, 3D printing is used for rapid prototyping - creating models of mechanisms and, especially often, architectural models. In addition, now 3D printers have begun to be used to produce large parts from which prefabricated houses are created. The Chinese company Winsun is experimenting with this technology.

In the automotive industry, 3D printing scale model production is widespread and seems to have completely supplanted the old plasticine sculpting technique. A model of James Bond's car from the movie "Skyfall" was printed on a 3D printer. And in 2010, a prototype of the Urbee car was created, the entire body of which was printed on a 3D printer.

ideas2cycles, Finland, The Fixer, 2012

Several bicycle frames have been created using a 3D printer (and even an entire Airbike bike - developed by EADS), but in their case there is no talk of mass production yet. More promising is the printing of couplings made of durable plastic, with the help of which in small "garage" bicycle workshops it is possible to assemble frames from factory metal tubes.

Chair Gaudi (Bram Genin)

A mold is printed on a 3D printer, which is then used to cast the supporting structure of the chair.

Hot Pop Factory

Sculpture of Charles and Ray Eames DSW chairs scanned and 3D printed.

LINK system

Christian Sjöström, Sweden, 2015.

Prototype Node

Modeling in Grasshopper. Charles Freed, UK, 2015.

3D printed as whole furniture (e.g. Gaudi chairs, designed by Bram Genen, 2009) and piece by piece (designed by Benjamin Vermeulen), as well as connections with which prefabricated furniture can be assembled without using bolts and nuts. Such joints have been made before, but 3D printing has greatly simplified their production.

Noah Raviv. Hard copy collection. 2014

Chromat. Formula 15 collection. Spring-summer 2015

Michael Schmidt, Francis Bitonti. Dita Von Teese dress. Laser printing (SLS). 2013

Iris van Herpen, Julia Koerner, Voltage Show. Print materialize. 2013

Iris van Herpen. Crystallization Collection. Summer 2010

Iris van Herpen. Autumn-Winter 2013-14

3D printers can print elements from which plastic fabric is then woven. Either from this fabric, or directly from plastic, dresses, bathing suits, shoes are created. Iris van Herpen has released several collections of 3D printed dresses and shoes. United Nude prints shoes designed by famous designers and architects: Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Ross Lovegrove. But the most famous piece of clothing created using this technology is Dita Von Teese's mesh nylon dress.

#Cast is a custom tire consisting of the letters that the patient most often typed on Twitter. Manufacturer FATHOM, designer Eva DeCapri (USA). 2014

Prosthesis on the model of the patient's skull. Photo from Walter Reed Hospital in Washington

Arm splint. The developers are UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning students Nicholas Solakian, Peter Nguyen and Derek Buell. 2013

Medicine is the most promising application for 3D printing. By scanning the surface of the body, it is possible to create fixation bandages that exactly match the anatomy of a particular patient, “custom” prostheses and implants that reproduce lost parts of the skeleton. One unfortunate man who lost half of his face had the missing half printed on a 3D printer. There is no photo of this person here, but you can easily find it if you wish.

Printer self-reproduction

There are printers that can print parts of themselves. Undoubtedly, in the coming years they will learn to breed.

Growing donor organs

3D printing technologies for living tissues and organs are being developed. Living cells are used as the material, with which the printer "seeds" the matrix.

The text was first published in the online magazine of the Rizoma Design School, edited by Tatyana Bakina.

Artem Dezhurko

Art and design historian, exhibition consultant and curator, architectural journalist.

Fashion Architecture

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Fashion field at the HSE School of Design

HSE School of Design is a meeting place for the most talented students in Moscow and Russia who see their careers in the fashion industry. They learn under the guidance of curators - current designers and industry professionals who immerse students in the current context. Deep theoretical and practical training allows students to choose any profession in the fashion world, not limited to fashion design, and a student portfolio and participation in specialized competitions and fashion weeks helps to express themselves in a professional environment while still being students.