Now
I'm in an introverted learning phase at this time, studying algorithmic art and machine learning (but not LLMs and definitely not text-based), and looking for the next thing. I've added glass fusing to my material pursuits, and how that meshes with 3D printing, if it does. I haven't come upon anything market-ready, but it's busy and interesting time for me, and when something pops up I surely will post about it.
Occasionally I show up these places:
- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now Mastodon. (Before leaving the twitpocalypse I dropped a nice thread about neural cellular automata including videos.)
- Thingiverse has printable files for download
- Sketchfab has 3D flyaround views of various things, mainly crossover from my other gig as CrystalProteins
- Shapeways carries models in plastic, steel including some designs not available here, and I recommend their jewelry-sized silver, brass, and bronze
April 15, 2024 Steel Supply Troubles
Hello, it's been a while but yes, I'm still here. You may have noticed that many metal pieces are out of stock, and the best I can say is that I'm working on it. My supply of binder jetted steel (as it's now called) was interrupted by changes in the industry, and I'm actively searching for a new manufacturer. There aren't many people on the planet who can make these with the material and to the quality we want to see here, but there's good hope.
Prices will, I'm sorry to say, go up. I had a nice long ride – and by long I mean nearly 20 years – when the original developer of this printing technology held their startup pricing scale for me, but now I'm in the open market, and it's not yet clear where these will land, beyond that all prices will be noticeably higher. So if something you like is in stock then now might be a good time.
Thanks for continuing on this journey with me. Our dream of cheap freeform metal printing all round wasn't realized this time, but none can say what the future may hold – more news as it break.
December 8, 2022 Holiday Shipping
The last reasonable shopping day for Christmas arrival in the US is Sunday, December 18.
For international shipping, orders placed with Express Mail by Monday, December 12 may arrive on time, but I can't guarantee it.
My last shipping day in 2022 is Thursday December 22nd, cutoff at noon Eastern time; then I go on break until January.
Thanks for another year in making art!
Happy holidays*!
*if you do that sort of thing.
May 5, 2022 Repricing
After 12 years holding the line, my metal supplier (formerly Ex One, now owned by Desktop Metal) has raised prices. It's a big hike, as one might expect after so long and in such uncertain times. With over 60 skus here the numbers aren't all in yet, but right now it looks like jumps from 25 to 100%.
I don't like to raise prices on everything while most of my stock was still bought at the old prices, so for now this will take effect as items run out. On the plus side I just stocked up on Klein bottles: as I write today there are 27 left, so if you need one at $66 now's the time.
I'm sorry. Yet this day was bound to come, and the only wonder is that it wasn't years ago.
Meanwhile I'm working every day with glass, and it's a steep learning curve, but I hope to have some good 'fusion' parts up this summer, combining glass and steel.
December 10, 2020 Holiday Shipping
The last plausible date to order for Christmas arrival in the US is Thursday, December 17.
From there I'll try to ship next day, and we can hope for postal luck.
International shipping? Again, I'm happy to ship but I can't guarantee delivery dates.
My last shipping day in 2020 is Wednesday the 23rd, cutoff at noon Eastern time.
Then I'll go on break until mid-January. My lockdown year has been all about glasswork, and I'm ready to take some time in the studio!
Thanks for staying with me through a challenging year! And if we met this year, I'm glad you're here.
Happy holidays1!
1as much as possible under the circs.
November 4, 2020 Inevitably, Novel Coronavirus
To my knowledge no complete structure has been published, so with the generous help of Dr Scott Monsma, Virus Scientist (more specific credit to follow) I've assembled one from the pieces. This is quite complete, including realistically supercoiled center RNA. It's not a rigidly icosahedral virus such as we usually see, instead having a flexible shell studded with curvature-mediating proteins, which changes shape when it goes on the attack. This one is just sitting quietly. Catch yours here.
October 22, 2020 Glass Quarantine
I took a left turn into glass, and now I'm casting paperweights from 3D prints with algorithmic designs. Everyone says they look like brains but you are all mistaken, they look like brain corals.
As noted above, these are mostly getting posted on social media now, and if I start selling they'll probably go up on Etsy first. (Sorry my homeslices, it's where people do their comfort shopping now...and tbh if you like my early work you might not like these. Gotta follow my star, and right now my star is fanciful sea slugs.)
This one glows in the dark. ↓
December 13, 2019 Holiday Shipping
The last date to order for Christmas arrival in the US is Wednesday, December 18. International shipping is done for the year.
My last shipping day in 2019 is Monday the 23rd, cutoff at noon Eastern time, and I'll then go on break until mid-January.
Thanks for staying with me through another year – or if we haven't met before, glad you're here.
Happy holidays!
December 13, 2019 Still Alive
I added a glass piece with orbitals – always an obvious subject, and finally I met someone with a plan to generate point clouds.
Regarding sculpture proper, please note the Now section above: I'm posting models pretty often lately, but mostly on actual social media.
May 23, 2019 Skull Time
It had to happen sooner or later, and here we are:
December 11, 2018 Generativity Continues, Also Holiday Shipping
I am still working on my generator. It's grown into a big (for me) piece of code, and I've learned some (by no means all) Python along the way. It's supposed to have some designs in a show soon, so progress may be happening. I remain interested and hope to have tangible results in the future. They're in the plan.
Generating 10,000 sculptures seems less plausible now, in that I'm no longer convinced there are that many objects worth generating in the space. I should get some hundreds at least though. And if I do get enough to need deep learning to sort them, in the course of generating I was able to abstract some properties that could be used instead of a voxelwise approach.
Meanwhile I would appreciate if someone invents an archival color printing process. Any material OK as long as the price is right, I look forward to hearing more, tyvm.
In more proximate news, here is a new glass piece with an ammonite scan. Very beautiful data, and comes with a pleasant paper.
And of course it's that time of year again.
The last date to order for Christmas arrival in the US is Tuesday, December 18th. International shipping is pretty much done for the year.
My last shipping day in 2018 will be Friday the 21st, cutoff at noon Eastern time.
And as to Shapeways, they are actually still selling prints (though their front page no longer looks like it, which is a subject of much speculation among shopowners), I still have a bunch of stuff up there, and there are still a few shipping days left on their clock.
Happy holidays!
February 6, 2018 New Project
I've been working on a big (for me) piece of code intended to generate sculpture. This is the first proof-of-concept model from it.
What's interesting to me about this is not that it's particularly great, but that it's completely automated: no hands.
My goal in this project was to write a generator that makes 10,000 sculptures, with the idea of using a neural net to pick out the good ones. Then I decided to add a few simple constraints for interestingness, just to prevent it from generating 8,000 cubes. Now I think I might not need the neural net.
This would be good because training it could be hard. I'm not sure whether encoding the models lexically would be better, or looking at them voxelwise and doing imagelike processing. I'm not sure I can round up a big enough training set of known interesting ones. And of course I'd be starting from zero knowledge, there would be a lot to figure out.
Anyway next thing is to press the button a bunch of times and see what comes out, and fix some of the stuff I left undone while getting to this minimum-viable point.
To answer your next question, I wrote it using Rhino/Grasshopper/Python.
December 14, 2017 Holiday Shipping Update
This year the post office is doing very poorly with international shipments. Right now I have two boxes completely lost, and more delayed, and I can't recommend any international shipments at this time. Wait till January, and your art will actually arrive!
And Shapeways is pretty much done for the year.
December 8, 2017 Holiday Shipping
My last shipping day in 2017 will be Friday the 22nd, until noon Eastern time. After that I take a break, returning to the office January 15th.
This is when to order to be reasonably sure your package will be here on time. I can't guarantee what the post office will do, and that's especially true for international shipments, but here's my best guess:
| Priority Mail | Monday, Dec 18 |
| International Priority Mail | |
| Canada, Europe | Friday Dec 8 |
| Asia, Australia | Thursday, Dec 7 |
| International Express Mail | |
| Worldwide | Monday, Dec 18 (Not really! Don't do this!) |
And while we're at it, Shapeways has a few days left on the clock. Lots of good stuff there!
Best wishes for the season!
August 1, 2017 Rhinovirus
Apparently I never posted about this virus. You probably saw it already on Facebook, but for completeness:
December 8, 2016 Christmas Shipping
My last shipping day in 2016 will be Friday December 23rd, order cutoff at 6 PM Eastern time. Then I'm on break, and shipments will resume Wednesday January 11th.
Here's when to order, to be reasonably sure your package will arrive on time. I can't guarantee what the post office will do, and that's especially true for international shipments, but here's my best guess:
| Priority Mail | Monday, Dec 19 |
| International Priority Mail | |
| Canada, Europe, Middle East | Friday, Dec 9 |
| Asia, Australia | Thursday, Dec 8 |
| International Express Mail | Tuesday, Dec 13 |
Best wishes for the season!
September 29, 2016 On Shapeways Anyway
People liked those color prints, so I went ahead and put them up: here are the flying slug with orange spots, and the purple marble holder.
Also I made a pendant of a different slug.
Mine is silver and very fetching. Plastic is just as realistic and only $6.
August 25, 2016 Color Prints
A couple of color prints. These aren't something that could become a product in the present state of the technology, but you never know: the future might be different.
I made the top one using a physics simulator to create the negative curvature: Kangaroo, which runs in Grasshopper, which is a plug-in of Rhinoceros. It was a fairly esoteric software experience.
June 10, 2016 Submarining
Just to say that I'm still here, and experimenting with some things which are taking time to bear fruit. Or none of them may work out...on average, I would say that about 1 in 20 things does.
I'm now working with casting glass in printed molds, and continuing the direction of snap-fit and magnetic assemblages.
March 31, 2016 Pendant Sale
I'm moving most of my pendants to Shapeways, where they can be in a greater variety of materials, at prices from $6 in plastic to $n000 in platinum. I'm very happy with Shapeways' production and finish quality – their steel is made by the same people as mine, so there'll be no loss there.
Therefore I'm offering my remaining stock of steel pendants at $25 apiece here: it's a good price until they're gone.
I'd like to draw your attention to this tiny Klein bottle. It's an incredibly high-resolution print in pure stainless steel, not the usual steel/bronze at all. I got a deal on a batch of these while the technology was in prototype, and when they're gone this design will run about $140.
March 18, 2016 Laser Glass Radiolarians
A new glass piece with some of the prettiest data I ever saw. We've been enjoying 2D images of radiolarians since Haeckel, and now it's become possible to scan them in 3D, and they're all that we hoped.
March 10, 2016 Glass experiments
Experiments with glass continue. Attempts to use it like enamel on 3D printed steel haven't gone well, which isn't surprising as alloys don't generally work with enamel, and this sort of composite metal is probably worse. Now I'm looking at various kinds of fusing, including 3D printed ceramic molds.
I made some of these, with dichroic glass layered into the molds. I like them, but I'm not sure about production. Price comes in on the high side. The right one is prettier than it photographs – like many an artist before, I've discovered that clear glass and iridescence are hard to take pictures of.
With 1" circles of EL panel.
January 14, 2016 New Space Cube
A large scale map showing galactic superclusters in the context of velocity flows rather than static mass.
December 24, 2015 Happy Holidays!
And it's over for this year, we'll be back January 4th. Thanks for your patience while we recharge.
Meanwhile, I'm doing some experiments with glass fusing.
December 3, 2015 Holiday Shipping
Our last shipping day in 2015 will be Wednesday the 23rd, order cutoff at noon Eastern time. After it's all over, we'll be back in the office Monday January 4th.
This is when to order to be reasonably sure your package will be here on time. I can't make guarantees about what UPS and the post office will do, and that's especially true for international shipments, but here's my best guess:
| UPS Ground | Tuesday, Dec 15 |
| UPS 3-Day | Thursday, Dec 17 |
| UPS 2-Day | Friday, Dec 18 |
| UPS Next Day | Wednesday, Dec 23, by noon Eastern time |
| Priority Mail | Friday, Dec 18 |
| International Priority Mail | |
| Canada, Europe, Middle East | Thursday, Dec 10 |
| Asia, Australia | Monday, Dec 7 |
| International Express Mail | |
| Europe, Canada, Middle East, Asia, Australia |
Monday, Dec 14 |
Best wishes for the season!
October 22, 2015 G3 Sculpture
I made another thing.
I'd like to draw your attention to the small pendant versions of this at Shapeways. They are, I think, cute.
A "mini" size for this will be forthcoming.
June 23, 2015 Two Shows
Not solo of course, but interesting shows with some of my things. One's in London: Digital Handmade, Craftsmanship in the New Industrial Revolution. June 30 to July 19 at the Piccadilly Waterstones bookstore cafe.
This in honor of Lucy Johnston's book of the same name, just in preorder. The bits I've seen look terrific, and it's very well reviewed.
The other show is at the MDI Biological Laboratory in Salisbury Cove, Maine: Art Meets Science: Imagine the Possibilities, and there are artist talks to go with. I'm tempted to drive up the coast myself.
June 19, 2015 On Sabbatical
A new shell-alien is up. The steel version I've got is fine, but what I really love is the tiny bronze ones.
You may have noticed that it's been slow here lately – so have I. It seems I'm on sabbatical from art: for a while I was 'between projects' but now I think I'm done for a while.
First things first: I'm still minding the store. My designs will continue to be available here and at Shapeways. On the glass side, which is altogether separate from metal in my head, you may see some new things soon. Although not much may happen for a while, this site is live.
Why? I feel that thirty-year story arc has come to a natural end. How do you make a lot of geometrical sculpture? You do it with 3D printing. Is that a good idea? Yes, it is. Metal printing is the best! I did a lot of it, and evangelized a lot too, and now I've explored that and it's established. My work here is done.
Are you coming back to it? I don't know. My friends say, of course you will. (They're mostly smarter than I am.)
The lives of the artists say that it's usual for artists who've done good work to spend their final twenty or thirty years either fixated on a single idea, or in a state of cheerful drivel. I've never been one to fixate, and I'm not quite ready to shift gears and have fun with art. Can I mention that it's been a bitter struggle? Doing this work was difficult, austere, occasionally sublime, difficult. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad it's done. Anyway, right now I'm knocking off to just do my job and ride bikes for a while.
Take care.
January 29, 2015 Show in PA
Things by me, as well as other artists, will be at the Madelon Powers Gallery in East Stroudsburg, PA. The show opens Monday, February 2nd, and there will be a reception Thursday the 5th. Doug Bucci's talk is bound to be interesting.
December 22, 2014 End of 2014
And we're now on break for the rest of the year. Thanks for your support of the arts this season, and I wish you a happy winter!
December 8, 2014 Christmas 2014
It's Christmas shipping time! Our last shipping day in 2014 will be Tuesday the 23rd, ending at noon Eastern time, and we'll be back in the office Friday January 2nd.
This is when to order to be reasonably sure your package will be here on time. I can't make guarantees about what UPS and the post office will do, and that's especially true for international shipments. But here's my best guess:
| UPS Ground | |
| UPS 3-Day | |
| UPS 2-Day | |
| UPS Next Day | |
| Priority Mail | |
| International Priority Mail | |
| Europe, Canada, Middle East | |
| Asia, Australia | |
| International Express Mail | |
| Europe, Canada, Middle East, Asia, Australia |
|
| Africa, South America |
Best wishes for the season!
November 25, 2014
I updated this site. Some new bits were added and some old ones are gone. There are some known bugs, but it was time to switch. If there's anything you'd like to bring to my attention about the redesign, feel free.
October 17, 2014
Quite a long time since I updated here. I tweeted and facebooked, not that anyone reads Facebook now. However I am still here, and I have made some more sculpture. I'm trying to replace this site with a completely different site, and it's taking more time than I expected, and I'm reluctant to add new content here knowing I'll just have to port it in...real soon now. And a lot of other things happened too.
Anyway I made this
and this
and this
and these, which I put on Sculpteo because their ceramics palette is nicer
And I hope to have the new site up in the next few weeks.
