Australia National University, Canberra

I have been working in Canberra for over a week now. I am a Visiting Artist in Residence at Australia National University. Ceramics Area Head, Janet Deboos is a friend and traveling buddy from a couple of previous trips in China. She and her colleague, Greg Daley, have been exceptional hosts. I have been enjoying their students, which is an active and diversified group. I have lectured about my work, then on new technologies and I will be demonstrating my tarpaper technique next week. I will also lecture on my porcelain research through Europe as well.

I have a comfortable flat that is attached to the ceramics area so I basically roll out of bed and head to my studio. The School of Art is in a wonderful Art Deco building. Canberra is the national capital and has much to offer. It is a well-planned city and easy to get around.

I have been working on making molds of the 3D rapid prototypes I had printed at UF and brought with me. I will soon start slip casting. Keep checking this blog for new work. More to come!

Australia 2011 - First Stop Sydney

After 3 plane rides, the longest 15 hours, I arrived in Sydney. Australia. I was warmly welcomed by the Sydney University College of Art Ceramics faculty, Jan Guy, Head, and Dee Taylor Graham.

The College of Art is on their own campus, Kirkbridge, sandstone buildings set in a lovely park. Built in the late 1800’s the facility served as a mental institution until the 1960’s. The philosophy was that people with mental illness would feel better in beautiful setting. The buildings make for a great art school. The space is amazing.

I was put up in a small flat on campus. I gave a lecture and a demonstration while there. I took a bus ride to the waterfront, all too brief as it was getting dark and raining. I plan to take one of those ferries on my stop in Sydney on the way home. Jan and Dee took me to see another part of the bay the next night. Spectacular!

All in all, it was a wonderful visit and a great start to my Australian adventure.

Laser-sintering on Porcelain Canvas

Before leaving for Australia, I rushed to run a laser-sintering test on the new Porcelain Canvas sample with the help of my digital media gurus, Kenny Wilson and Zach Castedo-Rodgers. Thank you, Rachel Kingston for the samples.

I used Ferro’s Ceramark product for Ceramics and Glass. I have used the black and bronze on commercial porcelain tile with good results. This time I tried the green color. I have to say that the laser-sintering test is a failure – it should appear like china painted enamel on the surface. Instead, the laser cut into the surface of the sheet and stained the areas green. The good news is without the color, the effect would be like a lithophane.

I will plug away at this when I return next month from my residency at Australia National University. I need to follow up with Ferro on the setting for colors, as they seem to be dramatically different from the black as well as test the cutter without the material to see what it might bring regarding the change in translucency in the material. Please forgive the poor quality of the images - quick shots in the studio while packing! More on this….

Experiment in Laser Sintering

While in Limoge, France, I found this technology at the Royal Limoge Factory, used primarily on the bottom of work to fire on the factory name. The group then visited the Cerlase company to see where they make the laser for this purpose. I found out that the material used is distributed in the US by Ferro. I was able to order a sample and tested it at the UF Fab Lab.

I sprayed the material on to commercial porcelain tiles. I gave them an overnight to dry. Ferro has very detailed specs on the technique. I worked with Dan Tankersley, who put an Illustrator file together to run the test. The cutter fired the overglaze material on to the tile. After washing, the unfired overglaze is removed to reveal the fired overglaze. The advantage is the imagery you can develop through Illustrator and that you can eliminate the "third firing."

I have since ordered more colors from Ferro. Stay tuned for future tests.

Latest work

The last two posts described the process I used to create models through 3 D scanning and 3 D printing. Molds were made from these models and porcelain slip cast for the objects. The porcelain pieces were made in Hungary this past summer with Herend porcelain. I shipped the work home where I applied and fired luster and decals. I wanted them to be both contained in a box and also displayed with the box and corresponding collage. The collage is actually a collaboration with my father, long deceased but with the use of a flat bed scanner, I took some of his drawings scanned and printed them on archival paper. I layered other images, leaves and hearts, both ambiguous and similar forms, to complete the collages. The boxes are made of museum board, cut and scored on a laser cutter.

3 D Printing

Once the objects are scanned and finalized, the file is downloaded to the computer attached to the Object 3D printer. This printer is of high quality, printing an object using a resin with forty jets. The support material has no binder and is basically power washed off to leave the hardened model. I have been using these models to make molds for slip casting. The next blog will show you some of the work I made using this process.

3 D Scanning

I have been working in the University of Florida Art and Architecture Fabrication Lab, with Dan Tankersley, MFA DIgital Media. We have been scanning natural objects then manipulating and finalizing the file. The scanner relies on reflective dots to find the object it needs to scan. SOme objects scan easier than others. The scanner is not thrilled with rough textures and undercuts. These photos are of the scanning process. The next blog post will cover the printing.