The Feather Featured Art series is chosen by art teacher Vickey Belmont from her classes and/or independent art students. Belmont picks the best work during current units and encourages students to participate in these occasional posts. Other students are encouraged to submit art pieces as well. Please contact the editors directly or via adviser Kori James for submissions.
Description by art teacher Vickey Belmont:
This year I wanted to challenge my Art 2 students to something different. I had them take their art linear with a sculpture unit. The students were asked to create different types of sculptures using different materials.
The first project was a relief sculpture, which is a sculpture that has a solid back and can be hung on a wall, made from just using paper plates. The idea was inspired from this dress which is made completely from paper plates. A couple of students did a negative relief project from cardboard. They removed the paper revealing the corrugated lines of the cardboard, this artist shows portraits using this technique.
The final sculpture for this unit is a free standing sculpture in the round, a 3D sculpture that you can see from all sides. The website has some examples of sculptures from Chicago and a few ideas to help you create your own paper sculpture. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has so many different sculptures that you can explore from all over the world, these are all examples of free standing sculptures.
The students were given 150 small wooden picks, which were bigger than an average toothpick, Elmer’s glue, a hot glue gun and a base to build on. They were instructed to create a sculpture that implied movement; they needed to figure out a modular system that worked for them using triangles, cubes, or any shape that could be used in their sculpture.
The modules were placed on a small foam square, covered in plaster cloth that hardened to give a firm base. The sculpture had a one point contact on the base, which means their structure had to balance as they built. When assembling their sculpture, the students had to constantly evaluate the construction, identifying any areas that would cause their creation to crumble or be unbalanced.
The finished sculpture was spray painted in a color of the students choice that reflected what their project represented.
The projects turned out great. Some of the students loved the idea while others were a bit intimidated. But all the sculptures were unique and each one shows the builder’s personality in the design and color choice.
For more Feature Art, read Feature Art No. 4 – monochromatic portraits.
For more Feather articles go to Movie Review: Black Panther Wakanda Forever and PROMO: Student leadership hosts yearly drives.
