A brain. A backpack. A sound wave.

Think they have nothing in common? Think again.

On November 19th, Emily Baker, a lecturer in the Art Department of the Ric Edelman School of Communication and Creative Arts, led 17 students to WheatonArts, a historic glass manufacturing complex in Millville, to apply 21st century digital carving techniques to traditional glass blowing.

The results are shocking, this is a lesson about possibility and creativity.

Like all students, Daija McNeil from Wellingborough’s advanced studio art major developed the idea of ​​a container whose definition was determined by them, designed digitally, 3D printed, and then cast a mold around the object to capture the molten glass .

"I'm creating the sound waves of my best friend's voice," McNeill said.

Sound waves ebb and flow like ocean waves in the ocean, but by definition, the human eye cannot see them.

"I want to turn things you can't see visually into 3D aspects," McNeill said. "It's like a tunnel, with peaks and valleys."

Baker said McNeill’s unique homework method represented the entire class well.

"I tried to push the concept," she said of the course "Digital Sculpture: The Exploration of Crafts and New Technologies". "A lot of times students have this idea, but we have to make sure it fits."

Glass manufacturing in the "hot shop"

In the first cold breeze of early autumn, students wearing sweatshirts and knitted hats walked around in the huge brick furnace in the "hot shop" of Wheaton Art Glass Studio, in the plaster and silicone they made on campus Drill holes in the mold, which is the last step they are ready to meet. Skilled craftsmen will fill them with molten glass pellets and blow them into their shapes.

Baker said that it takes 24 hours or more for some objects to make castings to be 3D printed, a technology that involves computer-aided design to produce plastic 3D objects.

"One challenge is that many students have never made molds before," Baker said. "You can teach it, but they don't really learn it until they do."

Baker's background is in cast metal-cast metal-and said she is also a bit new to 3D printing, but she and her students accepted it.

"We are applying new technologies to traditional techniques-metal casting and glass blowing," she said.

In order to fund the program, including the use of WheatonArts thermal workshops, glass manufacturing materials and payment of employee salaries, Baker received a STORI fund grant through Edelman CCCA. She hopes that her class will expand the collaboration between Rowan and WheatonArts. Rowan itself is a product of a historic glass-making town.

Nicholas Kreuz, a senior electrical and computer engineering major from Quicktown, Pennsylvania, said that he took this course as an elective course, which challenged him to think in new and creative ways. His blood vessels: a life-size human brain composed of hundreds of MRI "slices" taken from open source MRI scans.

"Our concept is to create a container. I think the brain is an information container, but it will also be a physical container," Kreuz said.

For Gabby Kennedy, a junior in art education, the challenge of creating a container led her to cast a backpack with a glass bag, which she would tie to a cloth belt. When finished, she will find a used thrift store teddy bear and put it in a sack.

"It should represent the memories we carry with us, but so fragile. They are the most important thing we have," Kennedy said.

As for the bears used in thrift stores, Kennedy said that a new one would not work.

"I hope it's dirty and a little shabby," she said. "There is no story for something brand new."

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