A larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a female form by Portland sculptor and PNWS board member Julian Voss-Andreae was installed recently on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
The sculpture is notable not only for its artistic merit but also because, according to Voss-Andreae, it was “fully 3-D printed” over about 10,000 hours of printing time at his Portland studio. Voss-Andrea employed his battalion of LulzBot TAZ 3-D printers to construct more than 100 pieces that were assembled into the mold. The mold parts are built up by the printers using a filament thread known as PLA (polylactic acid, a biodegradable thermoplastic).
An article by Bridget Butler Millsaps in the June 23rd edition of the online journal 3DPrint.com quoted the sculptor about part of his attraction to 3-D technology. “The main benefit to me is that I am now able to create life-size bronze sculptures for a price that allows experimentation.”
Millsaps relied on Voss-Andreae’s “3-D team” to explain his casting and post-casting processes.
The completed PLA sections of the mold are repeatedly dipped in a ceramic bath until they are fully coated to an appropriate thickness, after which the PLA inside is burned out, leaving a negative mold for the bronze. When the casting is complete, the ceramic mold is removed and the bronze parts are cleaned assembled, and welded. Millsaps described the last process as “a huge and complicated 3-D puzzle.”
The Many Uses Of 3D Printing
Voss-Andreae told Millsaps that his 3-D printers get a lot of use. Besides creating molds, he uses them to print maquettes and parts of sculptures for use in the planning process. He even uses the machines to print replacement parts for the 3-D printers themselves. LulzBot heal thyself.
The new sculpture was installed in a planted area outside the Engineered Biosystems Building at Georgia Tech. It is designed to allow plants to grow around and through it.
In other news about Voss-Andreae, he has recently announced a winner of a 2017 CODA Award. The internationally acclaimed awards celebrate design projects that most successfully integrate commissioned art into interior, architectural, or public spaces.
Voss-Andreae was honored for his dual sculpture installation entitled Spannungsfeld and installed outside the new Physics and Nanotechnology Building at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The two sculptures, a woman and a man kneeling and facing one another, are each 10 feet tall.
Recognition of Spannungsfeld
The CODA website explains the work’s title thusly: “The German title of the installation (literally “tension field”) originated in physics but is used in contemporary German almost exclusively in a metaphorical sense, implying a dynamic tension, often between polar opposites, that permeates everything in its vicinity.
The CODAawards are presented each year by CODAWORX, a global online community that showcases and celebrates design projects featuring commissioned artwork in interior and architectural spaces. The organization is based in Madison, Wisconsin.
See more images of the work and learn more about CODAWORX at this address online. Learn more about Portland sculptor Voss-Andreae online at http://julianvossandreae.com.
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