plastician

plural plasticians

1. Someone or something that transforms or reshapes objects.

   Whatever in Nature is formed and shaped — be it the form of the plant persisting for a comparatively short time, or the eternally changing configuration of the animal body — carbon is everywhere the great plastician.

   2004, Rudolf Steiner, Agriculture Course: The Birth of the Biodynamic Method, →ISBN, page 44

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   Quite apart from the question of finance and the basic difficulty of finding the very large sums for completely refacing buildings, the writer personally comes down solidly on the side of the "plastician" rather than the "face-lifter".

   1955, The Royal Engineers Journal - Volume 69, page 303

   Today, I manipulate the sonic object as a sound plastician, and find myself confronted by the expression of a gesture which I cannot share except through the trace it leaves behind: the labelled object—that is, the sound recording.

   2001, Musicworks - Volumes 79-81, page 21

   This interpretation has provided the basis for a descriptive, 'plastician' approach that draws on pragmatism and aesthetics by combining experimental botany, developmental biology and biophysics of morphogenesis (Pouteau, 2011; unpublished data).

   2012, Thomas Potthast, Simon Meisch, Climate Change and Sustainable Development, →ISBN

2. One who works with molding metal.

   If this kind of real plasticity were to be incorporated in an analysis, the "plastician" would age rapidly and become a "collapsian" eventually.

   1960, Journal of the Engineering Mechanics Division - Volume 86, page 164

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   Tho first plastician was not a scientist, but with the gront demands of modern civilization the plastician today is attempting to systematize and simplify his job

   1945, Plastic Flow in Metals, page iii

   The general problem of analyzing stresses and strains during even simple forming operations is still beyond the range of the theoretical plastician.

   1953, Metal Progress - Volumes 63-64, page 134

   It may well be that in the future we shall be presented with a unified theory of mechanics which will bring together the apparently incompatible views of the plastician and the metallurgist.

   1964, Sheet Metal Industries - Volume 41, page 621

3. An artist involved with the plastic arts.

   They are also related to what has come to be recognized as 'found art', alongside the work of other modern artists or plasticians like the sculptor John Chamberlain, who worked out of junked car metal.

   2014, Laetitia Zecchini, Arun Kolatkar and Literary Modernism in India: Moving Lines, →ISBN, page 125

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   I am an architect, a plastician, a constructor. In trying to explain the circumstances of the invention of a working tool meant for people engaged on construction, I have thought and written from the architect's standpoint.

   1968, Le Corbusier, The modulor

4. An artist whose work is part of the plasticism movement.

   Mondrian was above all a plastician, and he was primarily concerned with the plastic.

   1994, Serge Fauchereau, Piet Mondrian, Mondrian and the neo-plasticist utopia, page 37

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   Even those who would practise a form of modern architecture (such as Le Corbusier. who is basically a cubist painter and plastician) conceive of architecture as painting, or as abstract composition in three dimensions, around which, but not in which, man walks in admiration.

   1955, Frank Lloyd Wright: His Contribution to the Beauty of American Life, page 327

   The history of contemporary art in Quebec presents itself fundamentally as an axis whose starting point is the automatist movement (1940-1950), followed by the plastician movement (1950-1965).

   1980, Art and Artists - Volume 15, page 37

   It is convenient to make these last two paintings the point of departure for modern painting, because they forget contours, volumes, chiaroscuro and even perspective. But these are only a plastician's objections.

   1997, Jean-François Guillou, Painting in 1000 photographs: from Giotto to Gauguin, →ISBN, page 106

   There were two groups of plasticians as you probably know. The first group were adepts of de Repentigny, the art critic. The second was formed later by Tousignant and myslef. The first group, influenced by Leduc and others, conceived of plastician painting according to Vasarely, namely polychrome for new buildings.

   1998, Fulvio Caccia, Interviews with the Phoenix, →ISBN, page 48

   It is by great effort that I have now reached the point where I am, and it is because I am a plastician, and a very sensitive person by the way, and also because I believe in the necessity of the Aesthetics of Period, that I have the feeling of being emgaged at this time, and able to produce architectrual developments within which everything fits -- from the inside to the outside, ...

   2002, Timothy Neat, Gillian McDermott, Closing the Circle: Thomas Howarth, Mackintosh and the Modern Movement, →ISBN, page 112

5. datedA plastic surgeon.

   Gross and minute physical deformities could be corrected by the plastician while at the same time preserving function.

   1950, Filipino Nurse - Volumes 20-22, page 149

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   And this is particularly true in operative work on the face; and especially in the repair of breaches made by excision around the eye, mouth and nose; for here the experienced plastician, by studied plan, can often cover or disguise unsightly lines left by the scalpel; or if this be denied, then such lines may sometimes be so shifted as to be invisible. By such work the plastician will win parental gratitude by relieving the face of childhood of unsightly scars; and surgical art will gratify age when it utilizes the latter's furrows for plastic disguises.

   1896, Levi Cooper Lane, The Surgery of the Head and Neck, page 454

   We have offered our products to our own burn surgeons and to other specialists of our and other hospitals, namely dermatologists, plasticians and specialists for long-term illnesses.

   1997, Nather Abdul Aziz, Phillips Glyn O, Strong D Michael, Advances In Tissue Banking - Volume 1, →ISBN, page 171