Artist, educator, and innovator, Mary Bates Neubauer, the recipient of the International Sculpture Center’s 2015 Outstanding Educator Award, bridges ancient and cutting-edge technologies. Trained and first hired as a foundry sculptor, she’s broadened her practice at Arizona State University’s sculpture program in the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, where she is a professor of sculpture. Far beyond casts, alloys, pours, and investments, she includes digital technologies that enhance traditional media to address the “big data” and virtuality that inform our world view. Collaborating with ASU’s Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling (PRISM) laboratories, and its founder Dan Collins, as well as ASU’s Software Factory, Neubauer has been a pioneer in the use of rapid prototyping (RP) and computer-numeric-controlled (CNC) milling. With her “feet in the digital and casting worlds,” she was one of the first artists to cast metal works from digitally rendered maquettes, molds, and interim materials—transforming sometimes un-gratifying CNC foam and RP plaster into resplendent iron, bronze, and copper sculptures. …see the entire article in the print version of October’s Sculpture magazine.
