Ross Tyger, at your service!

Greetings to all! My name is Ross Tyger and I’ll be a Maker Fellow at Ben Franklin Elementary this year. If you’ve ever been to the Greater Harrisburg Artfest, you may have encountered me onboard the VanGo! Museum on Wheels. I’m that guy in the VanGo. I design all of the exhibits and present them across the state… and yes, I drive the VanGo, too.

During the present exhibition, the Foundry Makerspace partnered with the VanGo to present an actual 3D printer. Our DeltaGo 3D printer has become quite a crowd pleaser.

I personally find the slick design and the amazingly agile printer head to be totally hypnotizing. Once I learned to use 3D printing and 3D modeling, I discovered what an amazing tool they can be for a museum educator. In fact, I am currently using 3D printing and 3D modeling to illustrate one of the most famous examples of vandalism and art restoration in history.

In 1972, a man named Laszlo Toth struck Michelangelo’s Pieta 15 blows with a hammer. Incredibly, restoration experts were able to restore the statue’s face and arms using a variety of fascinating techniques. Fast forward 40 years in time and an artist named Cosmo Wenman has published a 3D model of the Pieta which he created with photogrammetry. With old newspaper photographs as a reference, I have removed the same chunks of marble from Cosmo’s 3D model that Laszlo Toth did with his hammer. Now, I’m going to 3D print the sculpture and let visitors to the VanGo put the Pieta back together.

This is just one of the many exciting things that the Foundry has enabled me to create. I have a lot of plans to use technology on the VanGo, and the Foundry became a critical source of support and inspiration to me. My plan this year as Maker Fellow at Ben Franklin is to play some role reversal and serve as that kind of support to teachers and students. If the cool, new stuff happening on the VanGo is any indication, I think that the teachers, students, and I are going to have a lot of fun.