Rolando Diaz has been a painter for as long as he can remember. The ACU alum and Cuban native has spent more than 20 years working with paint on canvas. Only recently did he start thinking in three dimensions, creating several mixed media works from found objects and materials. Then he discovered the ACU Maker Lab.

Even before ACU’s new digital fabrication space opened to the campus in October, Ro began working alongside ACU faculty and staff inside the space, planning and creating a sculptural piece with the tools the facility offered.

The Learning Studio’s filmmaking team accompanied Ro and his collaborators during the project, including visiting his Dallas studio. The result is this beautiful two-minute documentary of the group’s creative process inside the Maker Lab, from start to finish.

Ro hopes to use this small model as a prototype for a five-foot version, to be unveiled at his annual gallery show in Dallas this December. We asked him to give us the backstory on “Forbidden Fruit,” the series of paintings on which the sculpture is based.