Chicago-based artist Joshua Harker has launched a Kickstarter project to fund the creation of his 3-D-printed ornate skulls — going against the conventional route of selling via a gallery.

Until Oct. 24, art lovers are able to pledge anywhere from $1 to $1,500 toward his project. Those who pledge at least $50 will get their hands on a small, palm-size skull sculpture; $100 will bag you a medium one and $250 will get you the large version (roughly life-size).

Harker has spent 20 years working on a drawing style where he creates “morphic, organic, knotted, unmakeable things” that he calls tangles. However, until recently they have been impossible to turn into sculptural forms. He explains: “Because of their complexity there was no practical way to create them sculpturally.”

However, in the last five years a perfect storm of software, technology and materials engineering have come together to allow him to create his artworks in 3-D. “This the first time in history that these kind of forms have been able to be made,” he says.

The skulls were designed using CAD software and then he used selective laser sintering using polyamide to create the skulls, layer by layer, before hand-finishing them.

Harker opted for the Kickstarter model to get his work seen and collected by more people. “The traditional way of communicating, exhibiting and selling art is profoundly changing and I intend to embrace it,” he says. “The idea is to offer my work for a limited amount of time directly without the extraneous exhibition costs and markups … a sort of pre-release. I will make as many as are pledged for in the next 45 days … be it one or a million billion.”

A million billion? Good luck with that, Josh.

See images of Crania Anatomica Filigre in Wired UK’s gallery.