Project #17 - Colors, Shapes and Stories in 3-D

This Wednesday, April 22nd, is Earth Day. Let's celebrate this important day with another project using recycled materials. I should tell you that I got this idea from my nephew, Jackson, who lives in Oakland, California. The artist who inspired this project is Frank Stella. You can read more about him at the end of this post.

Materials - Recycled materials (we used cardboard, but you could also use plastic, foil, styrofoam or other scrap materials), scissors, paint (if you don't have any paint, you could also use markers, crayons, or even scraps of colored paper)

Making - 
1.  Cut your scrap material into a variety of sizes and shapes that can be both geometric or organic (see vocabulary below). 
2.  Connect pieces together by cutting notches into each piece and then sliding them together.
3.  To make your art a free standing sculpture, you will have to choose two or more pieces that, when put together, will be free standing.
4.  Continue to add other shapes by cutting notches and sliding them together.
5.  When you have finished designing your composition of shapes, you can paint them just as they are, OR, you can slide the pieces apart to paint each one separately. 
6.  When the paint on both sides of your shapes is dry, you can slide the sculpture back together.
7.  I like the look of the scrap of cardboard that I used to paint on, so I am using part of it as a base.

My nephew Jackson's sculpture

Vocabulary - 
3-d (3-dimensional)- an object that is not flat and has more than 2 dimensions in space, so it not only has height and width, but also depth.

Geometric shape- a shape that is uniform according to mathematical descriptions, such as circles, triangles, squares and so on.

Organic shape-  is less predictable or uniform, like the shapes of things you find in nature, such as clouds, leaves or puddles of water.

Inspiration - Frank Stella is an American artist best known for his use of shape, color and pattern. His earlier works were traditional rectangular paintings of geometric forms and lines. Over time, he experimented with changing the normal shape of his paintings, instead using organic shapes with more and more texture. Eventually, he broke the painting surface into a combination of separate shapes connected at different angles in space. By doing this, his painting became sculptures. Frank Stella said that he composed shapes and colors to tell an abstract story.

Frank Stella, Exotic Bird Series, 1978-1979