How to Teach Sculpture When All you Have is Garbage

I have a small budget. I mean, tiny. I came to this school from a district which valued art so much that they allowed me to pretty much submit whatever order I needed, regardless of cost, and it would be supplied. Now I work with tight constraints, and that makes me think very creatively about not only what I need to run my class, but also how to teach processes that could be used with more frugal materials and result in cool works.

Cardboard is far and away one of my favorite free materials ever. It is so versatile! I use it in printmaking, painting, drawing, and sculpture. I walk the aisles of Costco in search of "good cardboard" to use in class, and the sweetest, most pristine pieces are reserved for the more elaborate works my students do.

When I teach processes over projects, it opens up students to a wide array of potential solutions. With cardboard as our medium, my students in Crafts learned several processes they could employ when creating a sculptural work. Limitations were all mental, really, and time-wise, I allotted five weeks of class (seems like a lot, and it is, but when classes are 50 minutes, sometimes 40, it seemed fair).

Here are some of the results of the cardboard sculpture problem (not project, mind you...).