See Denver Artist Jodi Stuart's Prismatic Woven Sculptures

So much of modern life is filtered through a virtual lens, surfing through pixels of color, animated worlds and wormholes of information. But what if these computerized experiences could enter our physical world, embodying gravity and dimension? These intangible sensations take flight in the hands of artist Jodi Stuart, who channels this digital cacophony through her 3D-printed sculptures and installations. Filling rooms, her creations swirl in the air, bouncing off walls and bursting from pixelated background imagery.

Exploring technology has always driven Stuart’s practice, from kaleidoscopic digital collages to video installations. “But I was craving something more tactile,” she recalls. Discovering handheld 3D-printing pens proved kismet. Akin to a motorized hot glue gun, plastic filament is inserted, heated, then pushed out through an extruder. Experimenting with the pen “felt like mixing handmade craft with technology,” Stuart explains. “Using it is almost like knitting or crocheting; it’s a very meditative process. And it satisfied my urge to make marks, to use color and create three-dimensional sculptures all at once.”

Early experiments felt like probing a new frontier. “It’s a drawing tool, but you can’t create perfectly straight lines,” the artist notes. As she developed her process, eventually using reams of the filament to wrap molds and forms, playing with scale and becoming fascinated with the resulting shadows and transparency, Stuart’s ideas exploded. Amorphous and quirky, her resulting sculptures borrow inspiration from virtual artifacts such as skeletal 3D-modeling wireframe graphics or computer-generated animations of DNA and human cells.

In her South Broadway workspace within Tank Studios, Stuart begins by sketching out a form, then builds its structure segment by segment using PLA filament, a corn-based renewable bioplastic. A menagerie of eclectic objects (beach balls, wooden cones, concrete forming tubes from the hardware store) act as molds to create repeating shapes rendered in bright hues. The PLA material doesn’t allow for a physical blending of different hues. “It never quite gets liquid, so you can’t mix shades like paint,” explains Stuart, who plays with layered, optical interactions instead. “I love joining and overlapping colors, exploring how looking through one affects the other,” she says.

These colors and shapes are soon to overtake the walls and floor of The Art Base gallery in Basalt in an upcoming solo exhibition—a thematic continuation of her recent show, “Future Fabulist,” at the Littleton Museum. Stuart plans to experiment with kinetic elements and even augmented reality, returning her real-life creations to their digital roots. Whether real or virtual, these works invite an appreciation of the wonder of technology swirling around us. “Computer algorithms whir away at a speed that human minds can’t conceive and, often, everyone feels information overload,” says the artist. “My slow process is a reaction to that; I have a lot of control over these forms. There’s not much between me and the filament.”