Last year I 3D Printed a John Fluevog “glass slipper” for Newcity’s “Design 50: Who Shapes Chicago” issue. This year i’m in it – #38 on the list! Thank you to Brian, Jan, Mike, Jason, Tony, Pedro and everyone at Newcity who has supported my journey with 3D Printing over the last 3 years or so.
“Long before President Obama name-checked 3D printing in a State of the Union address, Tom Burtonwood was a pioneer in a strange and new field.
The British-born artist and professor recognized that 3D printing technology has the potential to disrupt the design establishment by not only making prototyping nearly instant, but by rendering precious objects common and accessible.
An object lesson is Burtonwood’s current residency at the School of the Art Institute, where he is taking scans of art objects and reproducing them in neon-colored, tactile prints. He plans to release the resulting models as a 3D book—a kind of a hybrid of bas reliefs and children’s pop-up books. Burtonwood may just be stereolithography’s most committed evangelist. He and his equipment pop up in galleries, art stores, maker fairs and, recently, at the 3D Printer Experience, a space for the public to poke at the machines that will some day soon take over the world.” - Newcity Design 50
It’s been a wild ride so far. Today i’m shipping out two copies of Orihon to the MIT Library and Occidental College Mary Norton Clapp Library, they join the four i have recently sent to Yale University, The University of Delaware, The University of California at Santa Barbara and Lafayette College. These acquisitions are all courtesy of the hard work of Marshall Weber, Maya Taylor and Felice Tebbe from Booklyn. As the Newcity article states I am working on a new book as part of my residency at The Art Institute of Chicago – working exclusively from their collection. I’m using some new flexible filament called Ninja Flex to make the spine / hinge set up more like a regular book – my assistant Yasmine Afshar and I are working on some new prototypes and hopefully we’ll have something to post shortly.