Cardboard Construction

The cardboard construction station has been opened for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students. They were shown a slide show of two contemporary artists who work with cardboard: Andre Villers and Eric Strawcynski. The students were given only cardboard tubes and pieces of cardboard and glue to work with. Scoring carboard was demonstrated so that they could get a good corner. The students who chose this station immediately started building three-dimensional forms, which was amazing, since the two artists that had been introduced worked primarily with flat pieces, making large figures and masks.

The next time that the students came to art many more interesting forms and fasteners had been added: brads, wire, hole punches, tacky glue, glue gun to be used by the teacher if a student had tried everything else, small boxes, many small plastic containers, film canisters, prescription bottles, plastic lids, and some sheets of mylar. One student, Cody, created an octagonal shower with a very realistic water heater attached! He and some other students are creating a large house together. Another boy in two class periods created a two story house complete with stairs! These students are amazing! I thought that I would have mostly boys interested in this station, but in one class, all girls were working there. A lot of boys are busy currently doing very detailed drawings of dragons, or cars, or working collaboratively on a mural with a complete story line.