Anatomy and Art

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that Autodesk (the makers of many 3D animation softwares) must be in business with some medical arena selling carpal tunnel wrist braces and glasses.  These programs seem positively designed to make you squint and make foolish repetitive motions with your wrist.  When I had an arm in a sling for a bit a couple of years back, 3DsMax was the one program I never was able to drive left handed with any proficiency.  Left click, right click, middle mouse click and drag while holding down the option key without letting go of anything, even though you have to move further than your arm can reach with one motion.  All to reach that little tiny shape on the other side of your scene, you know, the one that you can barely see because you didn’t want it in the shot, so none of your lights are hitting it.  It’s that slightly less black bit sitting in space over there.  Yeah.  Maybe I’m just bitter because my shots have been giving me grief here lately.  But really, the more times you redo something, the more obvious the inherent flaws are.  But hey, even if this was a sign of disaster for me the other day, isn’t it still kind of pretty!

Just wanted to remind everyone about the upcoming First Friday show, this Friday, featuring We Burn.  This is looking to be a great show, and my only lament is not being able to be there in person to see it all go down.  Some of my work will be though, alongside many other talented artists.  If you’re in the Chicago area, you’ve really got to check it out.

The Flat Iron Building is at 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL.  No April foolin’!

The opening will run from 6-10pm this Friday, April 1st, and there will be a party at the closing on the 16th as well.  You don’t want to miss this.

Of my own work, I am featuring six paintings this time.

Others will be showing not only paintings, but also photography, sculpture, I believe we’re even going to have a Chiditerod shopping cart in the mix.  I can’t recommend enough that you come out.

Well, I’m back from the International Anaplastology Association Conference in sunny Sarasota, Florida now.  It was a lovely event, and so great to get to meet so many people working in anaplastology and hear their stories and what they’re up to.  We also teamed up with the International Symposium of Bone Conduction Hearing-Craniofacial Osseointegration this time, so there was a bit of a crash course for many of us in the details of bone conduction hearing aides, though most of the lectures remained separate.

The first day, some were busy taking certification exams for anaplastology.  I haven’t done this myself, nor am I even close to being qualified to take them (it takes 18 cases, handled solely start to finish, and photo documented along the way), but it seemed like those who did were relieved to be done afterward.  And what better way to relax after a test like that, or get to meet people for the first time if you’re like me and only just got there, than to have everyone out to the hotel’s beach house for a meet and greet get together with drinks, hors d’oeuvres, a little music, and a positively stellar view of the sunset.

Then bright and early Thursday morning, we kicked off the lectures with an opening ceremony followed by our first two invited lecturers, Barbara Boyan, and Anders Tjellström.  Barbara spoke on “Cell-Material Interactions: What They Mean Clinically,” and Anders spoke on “The Evolution of Titanium Implants.”  After that, we broke into anaplastology specific lectures and bone-conduction hearing lectures, with workshops happening at the same time in other rooms.

Personally, I stuck with the anaplastology lectures all day Thursday, and again on Friday morning.  There was a great deal of emphasis throughout these lectures on matters of surgical success in the placement of implants with regard to both the osseointegration of the implants into bone, as well as the peri-abutment tissue, and avoiding skin reactions there.  There was also a lot of talk about measurement and new technology for dealing with 3D forms as we do.

Then Friday afternoon, I attended my first of the workshops offered.  It was David Trainer’s “Mold Making: Materials and Techniques,” wherein he went over the use of some different materials he’s worked with to make sturdier, lighter, and yet very detailed molds.  I know I’d like to give some of those materials a test drive myself.

After his workshop, came another workshop in “Color Science and Acuity in Anaplastology.”  This one, I believe was put together by Paul Tanner, but then presented by Art Schmehling of X-Rite.  He spoke of various color systems, and how lighting affects color.  He brought attention to the inherent weaknesses we share of being able to remember colors with precision, and our susceptibility to color fatigue.  One interesting recommendation he had was to keep a space in the room where you see a patient for color matching painted a good neutral gray so that your color matching isn’t compromised by the surrounding environment.  He also mentioned briefly a bit about metalics and how they affect perceived depth.  I don’t believe that I’ve written about it here, but I’ve been mulling over some ideas about metalics in silicone for the last couple weeks.  So after the workshop, I was really excited to get to ask a few questions of a bona fide color expert about my thoughts there.

Saturday we only had a half day there.  We began with two more invited speakers as per our usual program openers.  Ichiro Nishimura’s “Systems Biology and Genetic Networks of Osseointegration” lecture was particularly interesting I thought.  He told us about his work at UCLA, and it sounds like they are finding a connection between vitamin D deficiency and osseointegration failure.  I’d never heard of that before, but if you type in vitamin d, and osseointegration into Google, you get a lot of links from research being done in this direction.  You also get some information about a circadian rhythm connection, which he brought up as well.  I won’t even attempt to try to tackle explaining his work in any depth here, but I would recommend that you look for it if you are interested.

And then the conference wrapped up with one last round, for which I chose to go back to the workshop room again, and hear a panel discussion on “Creative Problem Solving for Challenging Craniofacial Cases,” featuring Julie Jordan Brown, Gillian Duncan, Susan Habakuk, and Greg Gion (who started the clinic where I am presently interning.)  This was a nice opportunity to listen to the kinds of strategies more experienced anaplastologists have taken with their more complicated cases.

All in all, it was a very educational event, and a great opportunity to meet people and better understand the whole of the anaplastology field.  I’m so glad that I went.

Taking in the International Association of Anaplastology’s annual conference in Sarasota Florida this week.

Yeah….   life could be rougher.

I’ll tell ya more when I get back.

Chicago art lovers, the Flat Iron Group’s First Fridays event is featuring Chicago Burner Art, on Friday, April 1st, and on throughout the 16th when there will be a big closing reception.  Yours truly will be featuring six paintings on the walls alongside a number of other talented artists.  I do recommend that you come out and take a look.  Press release details are as follows…

An Exhibition of Art by Chicago Burners
We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art

WHAT: The closing party features an artists’ reception, live music & video, performance art, and other spontaneous creative fun. A $10 suggested donation at the door goes to BURN NFP.

WHY: Come explore, play, learn, smile, and take home a little Burning Man! We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art is a multimedia exploration of the impact the Burning Man festival has on Chicago artist-participants.

WHERE: The Flat Iron Arts Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago, IL

WHEN: The show opens as part of Flat Iron First Fridays on April 1, 2011 from 6pm – 10pm. The closing party and artists’ reception is April 16 from 6pm – 10pm.  The show runs from April 1 – 16.

HOW: Through photography, sculpture, video, works on paper, paintings, mixed media, installations, and performances, the community will get a feel for what it means to define oneself as a “burner,” and how the Burning Man principles of radical inclusion, self-expression, civic responsibility, leave no (environmental) trace, radical self-reliance, and active participation are carried over into art works and daily life in Chicago.

This show is made possible with generous support from Bold Urban Renaissance Network.

WHO: We Burn: Chicago Burning Man Art is curated by Elysia Lock and will feature works by
Zac Franzoni
Phillip Solomonson
Marci Rubin
Maria Scileppi
Tim Krueger
Nichelle Lawrence
Gabriel Garcia- Fraire
Jeff Austin
Sara Egner
Michael Schiele
Pat Hilander
Sally Sachs
Elysia Lock
Chiditarod Art Carts
Monster Wheels
Richard Bennett
Ellie Sorokin
April Randall
Lera Gershevich
Leo Spektor
Alexa Razma
Sloan

Tonight I ran my first bit of actual animation on the patient education piece!  No glitches at this point, and everything seems to be rendering quickly so far.  I’d thought I was setting myself up for doom when I put that skylight in the scene, but apparently not.  Take a look at a few frames from tonight’s test run.  That would be the slow rotation on the presurgical head which will then fade into the slow rotation of the presurgical skull.  I haven’t done anything with the background so far, and honestly I’m not sure I’ll want to do much.  I want the focus on the head, and the feeling to be uncluttered.  I also picked some background music today for the piece, so that is exciting as well.  I love it when these projects finally start to come together!

So, if you’ve been reading along here you already know that I’m presently up in Dallas finishing up my clinical practicum, and thus the anaplastology track with UIC’s biomedical visualization graduate program. My internship has been here, with Medical Art Prosthetics, and I couldn’t be happier with the exposure I am getting here to new techniques and working with different patients.

So right inside this building, up on the 3rd floor is where the magic happens.  People come in from all over Texas, and sometimes further for the quality prostheses created inside.  In just the short time I have been here, I’ve already seen patients and been a part of problem solving for individual needs. I’ve learned new impression taking and transfer methods and worked with new pigments, and different types of molds than anything I’d worked with previously.

The clinic was originally founded by anaplastologist Greg Gion MMS, CCA. I have only had the opportunity to speak with him on the phone so far, as he is currently based in Wisconsin now, but I am very much looking forward to meeting him in Sarasota next week at the International Association of Anaplastology conference.  As I understand it, this clinic was the first maxillofacial prosthetics facility to be owned and operated by a medical artist.  And now he’s made it happen again with the newer clinic out in Wisconsin.

These days it is anaplastologist Allison Vest, MS, CCA who you will find at the Medical Art Prosthetics clinic though. She is the anaplastologist I have been primarily working with, and I learn something of value from her every time I go in there.  Sometimes we talk about business and what goes in to running a private practice.  Other times we talk about materials or different techniques.  The last time I was in there, I got to open up a mold that I was particularly excited about.  It was a complicated piece, but it worked!  I’m so lucky to get to learn from her.

Also, working alongside Allison, Colette Shrader, MS, has been hard at work launching her own branch of Radiant Impressions, custom breast prostheses, as an alternative to surgical breast reconstruction.  It’s fun seeing her again since meeting her through UIC in Chicago originally.

Also as part of my internship arrangement with Allison, I am doing an observationship with anaplastologist Suzanne Verma, MAMS over at Baylor College of Dentistry, here.

Suzanne is great.  I came and visited her once before and had a great experience doing so.  This time I’m still soaking in information right and left with her, but I’m also getting the chance to follow along with the care of a patient over time.  I think that working with patients and trouble shooting individual difficulties and preferences is one of my favorite things about anaplastology.

All in all, this is proving to be a very valuable time in my training, and I feel fortunate to get to soak in so much exposure to various ways of doing things.

I bookmarked this a while back, but it looks like I never got around to posting it.  National Geographic did this piece on “The Skin Gun,” a new innovation for the treatment of burn victims.  It literally sprays the patient with their own stem cells and promotes skin regrowth and rapid healing.

The video itself is a little on the flashy side as it gets going, but give it a minute, the technology they are talking about is really exciting. Burn injuries are just so damaging. The idea of being able to basically airbrush on new healthy cells is just incredible.

Way to go Science!

I don’t often get very excited about pictures of flowers and butterflies, but Cecelia Webber has done something really cool here.

At first glance, her use of human figures isn’t even entirely apparent.  Sometimes you have to look closely.  Other times, she gives you a clue, like in this Summer Dandelion shot.

Her work as an artist includes this Petal series, impressionist and modernist paintings, experimental film and music video work, and an existentialist webcomic called I Don’t Get It Either.

You can read more about her here on her webpage.
http://ceceliawebber.com/about/

Awe yeah!  That looks to me like a skull that fits entirely inside the head I made for it!  It was poking out in a few places before, but now, I’d say that’s a fit I can work with.  I do believe my animation’s got a matching presurgical face and skull now!

**Edit** – Actually, I got a little prematurely excited there, and have since gone back and reworked things a bit.  The current model, looks more like this (keep in mind that this model features a shortened mandible)…

Now I will just have to go back in and realign my braces.