Final Project presentation

I tried to make a sextet (group of six) which are recreations of or merely loosely based on surrealist artists, with a main focus on Rene Magritte though one piece is inspired from Salvador Dali and another is an unknown artist.

Piece #1

My surrealist inspiration was Rene Magritte's painting titled Dark and Handsome:

My 3d version I call Dark and Handsome 2.0. It is more of a direct adaptation of the piece except seeing as several decades have passed since Magritte painted his piece and the world has changed a lot in that time, so I decided to make the orientation of the face change as well:

Jennifer Holstius printed this piece using her printer (it printed for 6 hours):

Piece 2

The second piece I want to talk about was inspired by Rene Magritte's The Pleasure Principle (Portrait of Edward James)

My 3d piece became less of an adaptation and more of a piece dedicated to what I thought was the main idea of the piece: ideas. Through association and combination I contrived a creature late one night a few weeks ago. I call it the Idea Monster:

The piece (which is also nicknamed the Colbert Creature) was 3d printed this using Thomas's resin printer. Pictures before I removed the supports:

And after. Ironically, just like the famous quote says, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry", so did my intended Idea Monster which had to be repair on the light bulb (and although I did enlarge them some of the claws of the creature broke off).

Piece 3

For the 3rd piece I wanted something simple yet equally surreal so I turned Salvador Dali and his Lobster Phone / Aphrodisiac Telephone:

However, I decided to go in a slightly different, more geometric direction than the original lobster. I call my 3d piece Moai Rotary:

I 3d printed this easter island phone piece at the library printer (it took around 50-60 minutes):

Piece 4

For my 4th piece I decided to go in a slightly different direction with a less intentional surreal art piece. So I decided to go with Winged Victory of Samothrace also known as Nike of Samothrace. Although this piece (which is located now in the Louvre) might not have started out headless I find it fun and fanciful in its final form:

I tried to make a modern take on that 2nd century BCE piece. My take I call Nike of Atchison:

Piece 5

I decided to go with a slight combination piece. It would be mainly inspired by Magritte's The Therapist (first image) but it has some similarities with his other painting The magician (second image):

I call my 3d piece The Patient of the Therapist or The Therapist's Patient. 

Piece 6

The final piece in my sextet was Magritte's Happy Hand:

 My version is called Key to my Heart:

And that's it. My 6 pieces. But I'm including some nonofficial designs for fun:

week 15 (week of 28 Nov)

Nov 29

Jumping off from thanksgiving I was finalizing and working on my pieces for the project.
I have completed the top hat with a face referencing Dark and Handsome (Magritte). Just need to clean some points so it will be ready to print.

I created a cat and violin fusion and a Elephant with a tuba (inspired by Vladimir Kush) but Thomas said those were too controlled. They did not have the same fusion as my Dark and Handsome 2.0. So those two are out.

I'm playing with Amelia Airhart's flight suit with wings. Also I'm playing with Steven Colbert's head for a piece. I'm not exactly focusing celebrities but they are the pieces of 3d material I am working on.

Dec 1

I cleaned up Dark and Handsome 2.0 so he'll be printed some time this weekend.

I also created a piece inspired by Dali's Lobster Phone / Aphrodisiac Telephone:

though in my version it has a Moai (easter island statue).

I also created a piece inspired by Magritte's The Pleasure Principle (Portrait of Edward James)

but my version has Stephen Colbert, a light bulb and a weird creature as the body (pictures will be posted later.

The others are still in process and less concrete so I'm less sure if they will be final ones, but those three are the ones I am printing: The Colbert Idea Creature will be printed on the resin printer, the Moai Rotary will be printed at the library and Dark and Handsome 2.0 will be printed at Jennifer's home printer. 

Dec 3

I printed Moai Rotary at the library. It is smaller than I expected but it works. I had a little difficulty with the skylab people because they said they would print it and I set up, left but then when I came back a few hours later the new print monitor didn't know what happened to the print they had to print it again. Fortunately it only took 50-60 minutes to print so it was not an issue but still annoying.

Dec 4

Jennifer Holstius printed my top hat face (Dark and Handsome 2.0). I actually just told her I didn't care about the size (left it up to her and her time) and she printed it a lot bigger than I expected. I took 6 hours to print but it turned out pretty well. When I got it there were a lot of supports around it (since it was a top hat after all so the brim stuck out and needed support, but once I removed that it was pretty nice. The Moai Rotary fits inside. I would post pictures but I think I'll wait for the tuesday post so I don't have to have duplicate posts.

week 14 (week of 21 Nov)

Nov 22
This being Thanksgiving week, we only had one day this week.
I am still working on which ones I will do.

I have the previous mentioned Dark and Handsome (Magritte) plus I have other ideas:

METAMORPHOSIS by Vladimir Kush

• So an elephant with a tuba (Kush)
• apple with mask - magritte
• shoes with feet - magritte
• man with bird cage head - magritte
• man with light bulb head
• owl leafs
• Magritte's lovers
• umbrella bird
• cat violin

week 13 (week of 14 Nov)

Nov 15
I thought about my plans for what I wanted to create. We also saw some examples of previous students in order to spur our creativity. I am leaning toward animal puns or phrases:

• catfishing
• croc-odial
• horse in my throat
• N-vest a Gator
• Card Shark
• Judge a book by its cover
• 2birds with one stone
• heart of the matter
• brain storm
• etc.

Not completely happy with the idea but will work on it more.

Nov 17
Talked with Thomas and we're throwing out the whole pun creations (though I may create them at some other time). I think I'll do something surrealistic based. Perhaps inspired by Rene Magritte.

This for example is a piece by Magritte I found in a book titled Dark and Handsome.

I have a few other ideas but will work on this weekend.

week 12 (week of 7 Nov)

11/8
We did our artist presentations today. I got to present last. I was prepared near the begining but I think I struggled with the philosophical aspect of the artist's work. I was less prepared for that portion, but fortunately I had decided to jump from the powerpoint to the artist's actual website so we could jump to all the images he posted for various exhibits.

I think we spent the most time on my artist with all the videos we chose to talk about. It was a nice discussion and I linked it to our previous discussion of Star Trek vision of the future.

We actually ended with mine since it took so much time but the other artists had equally interesting discussions.

11/10
We finished up the discussions today. I really enjoyed one of the last few ones because I got to draw upon my art history knowledge to mention Charles and Ray Eames and their chairs (among other designs which were similar to one of the 3D artists another student presented).

Presentation Link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_160mOQBUA5b3QyWng2ZzkxRFU/view?usp=sharing

week 11 (week of 31 Oct)

11/1

Today in class we started working with the program Meshmixer which we used to combine different pre-created shapes/creatures into a singular body. I myself made a mutated bunny.

Thomas also mentioned a free phone app which allows you to take pictures that are then combined to create 3d shapes. It is a little tricky but pretty cool.