3-D Printing in the Fashion Industry

Here is an amazing dress by Iris van Herpen. Made by 3-D printing. Cathedral Dress.

·         HYBRID HOLISM – 

July 2012, Paris Haute Couture Week

·         The project Hylozoic Ground by the Canadian architect and artist Philip Beesley provided the inspiration for this collection. Hylozoic refers to Hylozoism, the ancient belief that all matter is in some sense alive. Beesley created a responsive architectural system that uses hylozoism in a quite specific way, that is, “we are working with subtle materials, electricity and chemistry, weaving together interactions that at first create an architecture that simulates life but increasingly these interactions are starting to act like life, like some of the ingredients of life”. His environment breathes, shifts and moves in relationship to people walking through it, touching it, and sensing it. Microprocessors invest that environment with a primitive or insect-like intelligence like a coral reef or a great swarm.Iris van Herpen is intrigued by these kinds of possibilities for a future of fashion that might take on quite unimaginable shapes. Fashion that might be partly alive and growing, and, therefore, existing partly independent from us, which in turn allows for a new treatment by humans: instead of discarding the fashion after use, we cherish, value, and maintain it in its abilities to change constantly. Van Herpen’s translated this future vision in a collection that is highly complex and incredibly diverse in terms of shape, structure, and material. For one design, the ‘cathedral dress’ Van Herpen introduced a technique referred to as mammoth stereolithography which refers to a 3D printing method. This 3D printed process is built slice by slice from bottom to top, in a vessel of polymer that hardens when struck by a laser beam.

Many don't associate Buffalo in western New York State as a place for the avant-garde in the art world. Yet that is exactly what Hallwalls is, a place of art outside the mainstream. Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, New York, which was founded in 1974 and is one of the first alternative art centers in the United States.

Hallwalls was begun by art students who attended Buffalo State College in an old warehouse. Some of those artists were Vito Acconci, Robert Longo, Cindy Sherman, Charles Clough, Diane Bertolo, Nancy Dwyer, Larry Lundy, and Michael Zwack decided to transform the hallways between the artist studios there into a gallery — hence the name “Hallwalls.”

Hallwalls was one of the first places to mix it up, that is fine art, film, performance art, video, music, anything visual, from Longo to Clough. You didn't have to go to New York to experience an art happening, you could see one in Buffalo.

As I lived in Buffalo during the 80s, I remember going with friends to shows at Hallwalls to see the art and the fashion. Young people loved it, because it not just because of its alternative space but the gallery was open to new ideas that you just didn't see in galleries back then. Back in the late 80s, it organized Buffalo's first gay and lesbian film festival, and was almost closed down for allegedly displaying lewd material.

Hallwalls has always supportive of the avant-garde and the alternative and still is open to those ideas. You can visit them in Buffalo, NY.

Read more at ArtInfo

View the slide show

Andrew Wyeth and Cristina's World

Andrew Wyeth. Christina’s World. 1948. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. © 2012 Andrew Wyeth

What is it about Wyeth's Cristina's World ? It appears to be a simple painting of a young girl looking up towards her house.  It is one of the most recognized images in the art world, loved by many and perhaps scorned by those who don't have an appreciation for realism.



So who is the young woman gazing up towards the farm house on the hill? A new book from MoMA, Wyeth: Christina’s World, by MoMA curator Laura Hoptman explains in detail about this painting.  Hoptman writes, " Wyeth depicted only two locations in his paintings over the course of his 70-year career: Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where he was born, and South Cushing, Maine, where his wife Betsy’s family owned a home. And within these two locations, he focused mainly on two families, the Kuerners in Chadds Ford and the Olsons in South Cushing." Anna Christina Olson of South Cushing, who had a degenerative muscle condition that cost her the use of her legs by her early 30s, was the inspiration for Wyeth’s most famous painting. Wyeth explained, "The challenge to me was to do justice to her extraordinary conquest of a life which most people would consider hopeless."



Curator Laura Hoptman’s essay is illustrated with many of Wyeth's works and she writes about the work and places it within the context of Wyeth’s life and career.  As the art world moved onto Abstract Expressionism and then onto Pop Art, Wyeth never changed the style of how he worked. He drew criticism for being too conservative and for being too provincial as he refused to move on with the times. Hoptman's book examines kitsch and art-world elitism that continue to surround Wyeth’s work today, long after his death in 2009.

For more of Hoptman’s essay, download a preview of Wyeth: Christina’s World from the MoMA website.



Below are some items from the Art Division's collection

 VHS tape

Click here for the Helga Tapes on VHS

Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: At the Getty

The Ascension of Christ (detail) from the Laudario of Sant'Agnese, about 1340, Pacino di Bonaguida. Tempera and gold on parchment, 17 1/2 x 12 1/2 in. (44.4 x 31.8 cm). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 80a, verso

Peruzzi Altarpiece (detail), about 1309–15, Giotto di Bondone. Tempera and gold leaf on panel, 41 5/8 x 98 1/2 x 6 in. (105.7 x 250.2 x 15.2 cm). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, GL.60.17.7


In the early 1300s, creativity was flourishing in Florence at a time of unprecedented prosperity, urban expansion, and intellectual innovation. The Renaissance was awakening. In this dynamic climate, master painter Giotto di Bondone revolutionized painting with a new, more naturalistic approach to the human form. He—along with the iconic literary figure Dante Alighieri and accomplished panel painters and illuminators—formed a thriving artistic community that responded to the great demand for art and literature in the growing city, both for the decoration of sacred and secular buildings and for the illumination of luxurious manuscripts. 

This major international loan exhibition presents seven breathtaking paintings by Giotto, the largest number ever assembled in North America, as well as extraordinary works by his Florentine contemporaries, including painters Bernardo Daddi and Taddeo Gaddi and painter-illuminators Pacino di Bonaguida, the Master of the Dominican Effigies, and the Master of the Codex of Saint George. Among the highlights are the earliest illuminated copies of Dante's masterpiece the Divine Comedy, and nearly all the surviving leaves from the most important illuminated manuscript commission of the early 1300s, the Laudario of Sant'Agnese.

Read more at the Getty.

Read more about Giotto.

Andrew Wyeth in Winter

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.” – Andrew Wyeth



Andrew Wyeth, Winter Fields, 1942. Tempera on canvas, 17 1/4 × 41 in. (43.8 × 104.1 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Benno C. Schmidt in memory of Mr. Josiah Marvel, first owner of this picture 77.91© Andrew Wyeth

Snowy Landscapes by Andrew Wyeth

Winter can be beautiful if you know how to imagine what waits beneath the landscape. Andrew Wyeth certainly knew how to appreciate winter. Some of his winter landscapes can be seen here.



The Granary, 1961. Watercolor.



The Dam, 1960. Watercolor.



Untitled (Army Surplus Study), 1966. Watercolor.



Tenant Farmer, 1961. Tempura.



First Snow (Groundhog Day Study), 1959. Drybrush.



Ice Pool, 1969. Watercolor.



Winter 1946

Andrew Wyeth is an American Contemporary Realist Painter, born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, on July 12, 1917. He was the second and best known of four generations of Wyeth artists. Andrew Wyeth was taught by his father, artist and illustrator N.C. Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth is father of Jamie Wyeth, third generation contemporary realist painter. He liked to paint the landscape in winter and early spring when colors are subtle and trees are bare. The colors suit his tempera palette, low-key and subdued.

One major influence, discussed at length by Wyeth himself was King Vidor's The Big Parade. He claims to have seen the film which depicted family dynamics similar to his own, "a hundred-and-eighty-times" and believes it had the greatest influence on his work. The film's director Vidor later made a documentary, Metaphor where he and Wyeth discuss the influence of the film on his paintings, including Winter 1946, Snow Flurries, Portrait of Ralph Kline and Afternoon Flight of a Boy up a Tree.


Wyeth did in the winter, January 16, 2009.

Smithsonian article, Wyeth's World

Click the image below to access the catalog record for the Big Parade.

Read more about Andrew Wyeth at the official site and at the Farnsworth Art Museum.

Below are some items from Central's collection about Andrew Wyeth.

VHS tape

Click here for the Helga Tapes on VHS

19th Century Papier-Mâché Anatomical Bee and Beetle Models

These wonderful papier-mâché anatomical models of bees were made around 1875 by Dr. Louis Thomas Jerôme Auzoux (1797-1880). As a medical student in France in the early nineteenth-century, Auzoux was frustrated by the lack of real cadavers and the expense and delicacy of wax models to study anatomy. After his graduation from medical school in 1818, the entrepreneurial young doctor began experimenting with the creation of anatomical models, inspired by a visit to the papier-mâché workshop of Jean Francois Ameline in 1820. Taking his cue from puppet and doll-making techniques of the day, Auzoux developed his signature “Anatomie Clastique” approach: anatomical models made of a hardened paper paste, whose parts could be easily taken apart and reassembled.

By 1825, the demand for Auzoux’s models had grown so much that heopened a small factory in Saint Aubin d’Ecrosville, which employed 100 workers by 1828. (Check out this great feature from the Zoology Museum at the University of Aberdeen for some wonderful images of the factory, molds and tools Auzoux used to create his models). Over the next century, Auzoux and his factory produced over 600 zoological and botanical models, including a range depicting human bodies and foetuses, but I think his over-sized bee and beetle models are particularly charming. They are also astonishing in their detail: this model of a May beetle (made around 1850), for example, has hundreds of labelled anatomical details, and numbers to show the order in which its parts should be ‘dissected’. Although I know that these models were intended as educational tools, I think that they are also so delightfully playful: you can really see the influence of toy-making in Auzoux’s design approach.

// Images via the teaching collection of Comparative Zoology at the Zentralinstitut der Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, the Whipple Collection and On A Lark.

Found on The Museum of Ridiculous Interesting Things

Miles of Light: Botanical Photography by Romina Bacci

Photographer Romina Bacci lives in Texas, but she’s originally from Argentina and has travelled many times between North and South America. Her series of botanical photos, ‘Miles of Light‘, began as a photographic diary documenting her life on each continent. Her pictures not only express her fascination with nature, but also her desire to connect two distant lands through natural beauty.

To see more of Romina’s photography, visit her website, blog or Etsy shop.