Art and 3-D Printing

As it turns out, there really is a great future in plastics.

"There's nothing like working with plastic!" Marius Watz announced to an appreciative crowd at the start of a talk in Brooklyn recently. Mr. Watz, a Norwegian-born artist, was describing his work with MakerBot, a new consumer-grade, desktop-size 3-D printer. With some assembly and do-it-yourself tinkering, the MakerBot makes, or "prints," three-dimensional objects from molten plastic, creating a piggy bank, say, or a Darth Vader head from a computer design at the touch of a button.

"I'd heard about 3-D printing in the '90s, but at that time it sounded like some sci-fi technology, like laser guns," Mr. Watz said. "Basically, it sounded totally awesome."

"Awesome" was sort of the buzzword at MakerBot's inaugural open house, held at its warehouselike offices in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where Mr. Watz, its first artist in residence, showed off his sculptural forms ("We just started doing some blobby objects — vaguely disturbing but also awesome") to a few dozen admirers and MakerBot owners, mostly guys in various stages of nerdy bliss. ("Aaawwwe-some.")…

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