Penjing : Chinese Miniature Landscapes

Miniature rock and plant arrangements are known as the practice of Penjing. They are living works intended to capture the essence of natural landscapes. The practice dates back to the Tang dynasty (600-900) but is believed to have taken place much earlier. My 3-D printed Penjing are based not on a place, but on the sense of evoking a larger rock landscape. I hand-drew the rock forms through Sketch Pad, a program that the graduate students of the Media and Technology department at University of California had me beta-test during the Experimental Clay Residency at the Expressive Computation Lab in 2023.

The other works were modeled in Rhino, modified in Grasshopping with code from the Expressive Computation Lab graduate students. The works were then printed in stoneware with a Potterbot 3-D.