The panels on view in the exhibition Feathered Walls: Hangings from Ancient Peru were created by the Wari peoples of southern Peru. Their makers hand-knotted blue and yellow macaw feathers one by one onto cotton and camelid hair using slipped overhand knots. The strings of feathers were then sewn in horizontal rows onto large cotton panels.

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Many questions surround the beautiful feather panels, created between about 600 and 1000 by the Wari peoples of Peru, that are currently on view in the exhibition Feathered Walls: Hangings from Ancient Peru. The simplistic juxtapositions of color and painstaking care put into them tantalize the mind and make one wonder what purpose the panels served.

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As a preface, I would just like to ask that you not take my excitement about the work above to be some kind of authoritative perspective on it—in other words, that you'll visit the Museum, see this piece and have a great, transcendent epiphany with the swelling baritone of a hallelujah chorus behind you. Perhaps it's just me being overzealous and getting unnecessarily pumped up about something as usual. But, for a second, let's be indulgent and allow me to express how this piece requires you to reconfigure your mind, and just how weird and interesting it is. Let's break it down for a second, shall we?

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The idea for our 3D sculpture came together after taking pictures of a Chinese chimera and a bodhisattva from the Asian Art galleries, along with Ritual Seat for a Noble (Osa' osa), currently on view in the Met's Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas galleries. From there, we took each of the photos and stitched them together using 3D printing software.

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The inspiration for our 3D scanning and printing workshop project came from our mutual interest in both Asian and Greek mythology. Although we came across many potential subjects while getting to know the Museum's collection, we quickly decided to base our plastic sculpture on Greek mythological figures and Buddhist deities—combining animal and human forms to create a supernatural god.

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Before beginning the design process for our 3D sculpture, we were both inspired by three different sculptures currently on view at the Met: Lectern for the Reading of the Gospels with the Eagle of Saint John the Evangelist in the Medieval Sculpture Hall; Statue of the Goddess Sakhmet from the Egyptian Art collection; and Mourning Victory from the Melvin Memorial in the Charles Engelhard Court of The American Wing. With all of the artwork the Museum has to offer, it definitely seemed like choosing a subject to work with would be the most challenging part—but then the printing process began.

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As we walked through each gallery of the Met in order to determine the subject for our 3D sculpture, we were immediately inspired by the tranquility of Buddha Preaching the First Sermon at Sarnath in the Asian Art galleries. However, we were also intrigued by the fierceness of the Greek and Roman marble sculptures on display, and elected to combine both the head of the Roman Emperor Hadrian—currently on loan to the Museum—with the body of a lion.

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This past July, we and eight other high school students participated in the Metropolitan Museum's first 3D scanning and printing workshop for teens. During the weeklong intensive, we were introduced to the Met's collections of Asian, American, Oceanian, ancient Egyptian, and Roman art, and we then used specialized printers to convert photographs of some of these objects into 3D models.

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What happened here? Did someone spill paint on these tiles? Is this supposed to be blood? Is there blood all over the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art?!

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