Frank Stella's name means star in Italian, and for decades that was the problem, the reason he stopped making them. "When I started out, I didn't really want to hear about, 'My name was Stella and I made a shape painting of a star.'" But then, computer design technology came along, and 3-D printing. Suddenly the star had possibilities.

"It's pretty easy to put them together and turn them around and see how they look," he said, showing off his star models. The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Connecticut, has gathered a small galaxy of Frank Stella's stars, old and new.