If you’re wealthy or important enough to have a sculpture made of your likeness, Cosmo Wenman is the ideal person for the job. He’s proven himself to be an expert in digitizing and rematerializing famous works of art, often in new ways, using 3D printing. Most recently, the artist was commissioned to craft a life-sized 3D printed portrait as a surprise gift for a client’s colleague.
Because Cosmo couldn’t scan the person he was to recreate, he had to model a mesh based on photographs alone. Rather than design a standard bust, Cosmo opted for something a bit more godlike. The final design references the Artemision Bronze and Leighton’s An Athlete Wrestling with a Python.
The result isn’t simply a Grecian homage to someone living in the 21st Century. The project reflects some of Cosmo’s own philosophical concerns and the potential that desktop 3D printing carries. The artist urges more cultural artifacts, particularly of a historical nature, to be made accessible to the greatest number of people possible. Cosmo explains that this kind of remixing is just one small reason the world’s back catalog of public domain sculptural artwork should be digitized and published, freely, and without restriction.
Coupled with the relative accessibility of desktop 3D printing, public domain work has allowed Cosmo to bring the art of antiquity into his own workshop. This print, which was eventually painted to resemble an aged bronze statue, was initially printed on a MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer.
