Artist Turns Virtual World Sculpture Into Real World Bronze Statue With 3D Printing, Sells Multiple Copies for Hundreds of Dollars

Above left, "Dancer" in Second Life; right, "Dancer" in real world

Cool project from the acclaimed Canadian artist known as "Bryn Oh", who mainly uses Second Life as her creative medium: She's taken "Dancer", a virtual sculpture she created for one of her SL installations, 3D printed it, and then used that to create and sell bronze statues in the real world. After 3D printing the statue's 3D image file, she used that to create a wax mold. As she explains on her blog:

We used the lost wax process to create a mold to hold the molten bronze.  Essentially you create a cast around the model then melt it so that the wax runs out leaving a cavity to pour the bronze into.  Then 30 were created with each being 4 inches tall.

She's selling copies of the statue at ranges between $150 and $400, and so far, has sold almost 20. That's a good return on a very risky investment. As Bryn tells me:

"[W]hen I decided to invest in this I was mildly terrified that I would end up with 30 bronze sculptures in a box in my attic when I was done. I didn't really know if anyone would be interested so I wanted to pick a model that would appeal to a wide range of people to begin with, and if people were interested then future sculptures would be things like the Rabbicorn or Mr Zippers... so I wanted to start with a current work from SL that people would recognize and one that would translate nicely into the bronze medium."

Always love seeing great virtual art living on in more tangible forms. And now that she's proven there's a market for this, I hope other SL-based artists follow her lead!

Comments

[Blazespinnaker]

One of my fave lost wax cast vids https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVVSZP3Au4