Art and Design

I spent the last half of 2007 thinking about the important relationship between art and design. When I press the issue and try to dig into the ways design relates and fine art and vice versa, I find the line between them is often an illusion. Some of the most interesting things happening in both art and design seem to blur the line and even walk the line.

Erik Wenzel posted about figurines that The National Gallery produced from some notable paintings, taking the two dimensional work as a starting point and creating three dimensional objects. The most interesting thing is that three-dimensional objects can now be printed and not necessarily molded and cast.

Three-dimensional rapid prototyping is now coming of age and cheap 3D printers and being mass produced. Just last year 3D printing was limited to very few uses, costly and complicated. In the coming year 3D prints will become more common place and useful in more sectors.

Unfortunately, the figures from the National Gallery were not 3D printed and were also not actually made by artists. I am very interested in artist produced and created multiples.

Cereal Art is currently one of the best company around for producing artist multiples and they have worked with some incredible contemporary artists.