Jeff Cain displayed his unique 3D art that he made in collaboration with the college’s Engineering Design Lab during the reception of a new exhibit in Cerritos College’s own art gallery.
“Natural History” by Jeff Cain is on display this year from Jan. 27-March 13 for the newly established ART+TECH Artist-in-Residency program.
The Natural History reception was held Tuesday, Jan.27 evening at the same time as the Faculty Exhibit causing the Cerritos College Art Gallery to be filled with excitement and curiosity from students, faculty and community members.
President of the Artists Society club, Hope Garcia said, “This is a really great turn out, a lot more students have got involved this year and there are a lot more students than I have seen before. In fact there are even students from other schools that are here today.”
Students, faculty, and community members gathered around artist Jeff Cain’s 3D-printed sculpture, scanned from an actual taxidermy coyote that can be seen in the Cerritos College art gallery.
This year the Artist-in-Residency program selected professional artist Jeff Cain to work with the college’s faculty from amongst 20 applicants across the country.
Cain collaborated with both of Cerritos College’s Art and engineering departments to produce his unique artistic vision of 3D design for his exhibit Natural History.
For Cain’s main piece he used a taxidermy coyote that was scanned and printed using the 3D software from the Cerritos College Engineering Design Lab.
According to Cain the whole process took over 500 hours of printing because each part is built one-third of a millimeter at a time from ADS plastics.
All the animals in the exhibit are actual 3D scans from the animals in display cases at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles.
Cain said, “My idea for the whole show is thinking about California and the American West having a beautiful environment but also being the center of technological innovation.”
Another idea for theme ‘Natural History’ was a pun, considering many of the animals in Cain’s art are increasingly becoming extinct, endangered or at least their environments are changing significantly.
In a way, the natural is becoming the history.
The Artist-in-Residency program started about a year ago to help artists think outside the box to create a nontraditional medium by blurring the boundaries between the disciplines.
The idea is that each year a new department from technology will be chosen, this year it was 3D printing.
James MacDevitt, the curator of the exhibit, said, “Because of this partnership there is also the possibility of a 3D media certificate.” MacDevitt also revealed the department for next year’s gallery, which will be ‘auto body tech’.
