Cardboard Multiples

Using cardboard to make sculpture is easy, inexpensive, and fun.  The materials that will be needed for this project are sheets of cardboard, 18" x 24" (one for each student and perhaps some extra), scrap cardboard for stencils, scissors, rulers, and hot glue guns.

The Project

The students will each receive one sheet of cardboard, and they will cut out a piece in any shape that will be used as a base so that their sculpture will be able to stand on it's own.  Then they must design a shape and cut that shape out of the cardboard at least 40 times.  The shape can be anything from a square or triangle to a polygon of their own design. Depending on how large their pieces are they can continue to cut out more pieces until they run out of material.

This lesson is designed so that the students will have to plan ahead.  Their shapes have to be small enough so that at least 40 pieces can be removed from their piece of cardboard.  The size of their base is important as well so that enough material is left over for those 40 pieces.  To help with this, you will need some scrap cardboard, this can be cheap cardboard bought with the large sheets or from boxes picked up from a grocery store.  The students will use this scrap cardboard to cut out their shape and use it as a stencil.  They will then draw their shapes onto their sheets of cardboard to make sure that they can cut out at least 40 pieces and have a large enough piece for the base.

Once they have drawn out their 40 or more pieces, they will now cut out their pieces, and the base, using scissors.  After this they will begin gluing their pieces together in any form that they desire.  Their sculpture can be representative or abstract, it is up to the student to decide.  The sculpture should be finished before attaching it to the base, this is to make sure they can configure their piece to stand on its own while attached to the base.

Some students may finish early and might have enough time to add some color to their piece.  They can do so with paint, markers, crayons, etc.  Another thing that they can do is to tear some of the cardboard in places to show the corrugation inside.

Here are some online examples:

This last example is not all the same shape, but this is something that the students can do to attach their pieces together.  This artist used slits cut into the sides of each piece to attach the shapes perpendicularly.