3Doodler Artist Profile: Erica Gray’s Futuristic ‘Forms Organic’

If you are like me and have a fascination with all things 3Doodler and 3D printed fashion in equal measures, then you may have already caught the amazing 3Doodled fashion of Erica Gray. Gray, who hails from Australia, “works in mediums including painting, stitched textiles, wearable art and soft sculpture,” according to her self-description on her website. You may know her from her 3Doodled fashion contributions, which won the 3Doodler 2015 Award of the Year for Fashion. Now, Gray is getting more air time from 3Doodler as she is the featured artist in the 3Doodler Awards Spotlight series, which seeks to reveal more in-depth information about 2015’s winning Doodlers.

Forms Organic is the title of Gray’s latest fashion creation: it features organic figures and animalistic imagery, as well as more “rigid skeletal sections,” which are common themes that run throughout her wearable work. This project took a few weeks to complete, and here Gray describes in more detail the steps she took to create it:

“I usually pre-select the elements I want utilised within the piece, such as the polymer teeth, claws and nylon tail ….which I also sculpt from scratch. The main bulk of the piece is then 3Doodled around, through, or within those elements. I used roughly sketched stencils for some of the joins, and once those parts were ready I just assembled the form, building up layers of filament over select areas to exaggerate and construct the skeletal ridges.”

While Gray positions herself squarely in the middle of organic/animalistic traditions of design, it is nearly impossible to ignore the ways that the technological aesthetic is also alive and well in her work. Her wearable art, which uses “the 3Doodler and ABS plastic in combination with other materials to create a masked headpiece and torso section,” looks like fashion from the future that has been sent back in time to be with us in the here and now: 2016. But then again, 3D printing technology is already so forward-looking; her combination of organic and inorganic elements leaves us with otherworldly mystery intersected with recognizable and more familiar organic forms.

When asked by 3Doodler if she plans to produce wearable accessories, which are also becoming big in the world of 3D printed fashion, Gray answered that she usually integrates what would individually be known as “accessories” into her whole pieces. However, she has not ruled out “individually stylised, fluid plastic pieces for arms, legs, shoes, collars…”

Gray’s own planned artistic evolution also includes utilizing machine-based 3D printing in the future, as opposed to only staying with the freehand production that the 3Doodler affords. Gray comments:

“I’m interested in incorporating a mixture of freehand and machine printed pieces into some of my future works. Although freehand printing is predominantly more my style (as my work is more about the handmade, bespoke), one of a kind aesthetic.…the juxtaposition of structured componentry and the loose freehand form combination sounds intriguing and definitely worth further investigation.”

As part of Gray’s 3Doodler Award, she has received all of the plastic colors 3Doodler offers, and she claims that they are also showing up in her most recent sculpture work that has not been released to the public yet.

There’s much more to see of Gray’s wearable 3Doodled art on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages, so check out more of her organic/futuristic/animalistic fashion creations — and keep an eye on the 3Doodler site for updates about her latest freehand 3Doodled fashion. Isn’t this work incredible? Discuss further in the Erica Gray 3Doodler Art forum over at 3DPB.com.