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Carbondale artist uses high tech rendering to bring stone alive in sculptures

Leah Aegerter standing next to her sculpture, "Unmistakable Gesture of Stone" at the Gateway Public Art Project in Carbondale, where she translated textures of Red Hill onto steel and copper with the help of the local foundry.
Leah Aegerter/Courtesy

Using technology in sculpting doesn’t seem like a likely pair, but Leah Aegerter has fused them together to create amazing pieces.

Aegerter, 29, lives in Carbondale and has been there for four years, living in the valley for a total of seven and a half after an internship at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass. 

“I worked there for five years, I was the studio coordinator for the digital fabrication lab,” Aegerter said. “Anything that needs a computer or a digital file to operate a machine.”



While growing up in Seattle, Aegerter started out with ceramics in high school, making pots and throwing clay — and believed that’s what she’d be doing in years to come. 

“I went to Rhode Island School of Design and the ceramics class there was very small, I would’ve been the only student, so I thought, well I already know how to throw pots, so I decided to try something different,” Aegerter said. “I expanded my mind as to what art could be.”



Aegerter said when she started sculpting and using different materials, she never wanted to go back. 

“I like sculpting because it gives me the opportunity to find the medium that best fits my concept,” she said. “I like the thought process that comes with coming up with a concept and working with different materials to build that out.”

Aegerter’s biggest focus was on metal fabrication and woodworking for her BFA and while she was at RISD, she said she took a 3D modeling class. 

“I took it as an elective and the steepest learning curve is learning how to make your files,” Aegerter said. “I’m not the best at sketching and drawing, so 3D modeling clicked for me.”

She said seeing her sketches in perspective and building in 3D on the computer allowed her to see her art in a new way. 

“At Anderson Ranch, I applied my 3D modeling skills into working with new pieces of equipment, like a laser cutter and a 3D printer,” Aegerter said. 

She said she uses photogrammetry to take scans of rocks or geological figures, or using two dimensional photos, a multitude of them, to create a three dimensional scan on her computer. 

“I make a 3D rendering of the texture, then I take the digital file, output it on a 3D printer, and then I have a plastic rendering of that rock or feature,” Aegerter explained. “Then I take paper, my own paper that I’ve made so I can put different pigments in, I put the paper on the rendering to reproduce what I’ve seen out in the world, and I use those rocks to make sculptures.”

Aegerter says this approach allows her to leave the environment as she found it, and tries not to disturb anything while she’s taking photos, like she did for her biggest piece yet.

“I was commissioned by Carbondale Arts to make a sculpture for Gateway Park,” she said. “I’d never done anything on that scale, but I got an opportunity in April.”

This piece has textures scanned from Red Hill in Carbondale and she took those scans to the foundry to get them translated into steel and bronze. 

“It’s called the Unmistakable Gesture of Stone,” Aegerter said. 

The community of Carbondale is very artistic and supportive, she said, and never thought she’d stay in Colorado, only planning to stay for the summer. 

“Then life happened,” Aegerter said. “I stayed for the winter and now I’ve been here a long time.”

While living in the mountains, Aegerter has come to see them as alive, a huge stone structure with a lifespan unimaginable to humans because the changes in stone come incrementally. 

“I’ve come to see geology as an animated thing, that the rock is a collaborator,” she said. “Acknowledging the life cycles of the rock isn’t totally fathomable to me as a human, but rocks go through formation and erosion processes and I’ve come to see it as a life cycle.”

Aegerter said she sees ripples in the canyon and will think of wrinkled skin or find an eyeball in the rock face and she tries to incorporate that into her work so people can see that when they’re out in nature as well. 

“With the Unmistakable Gesture of Stone, I was thinking about what could the landscape look like if we used society’s infrastructure more harmoniously in nature,” Aegerter said. “In the piece, I think of the steel arches for the industrial, how the steel holds the rock textures in place, cradling them, but the way society is now, it’s very restricting to nature.”

Part of Aegerter’s inspiration comes from reading “The Emerald Mile” by Kevin Fedarko and seeing the canyon and valley all around her. 

“To me, it’s a landscape lost and it holds a lot of sadness, so that stone holds the history of the landscapes, past and present, so how can we harness that instead of using every last bit of resource on the planet?” Aegerter asked. “It’s also been a helpful perspective while thinking about climate change, that even though we’re perpetuating it in a faster timeline, it’ll happen whether it’s wrought by humans or mother nature.”

Aegerter’s art is available for viewing on her website at https://www.leahaegerter.com/ and her sculpture, “Unmistakable Gesture of Stone” is at the entrance to the Gateway Public Art Project at Colorado Highway 133 in Carbondale.

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