Trash today, art tomorrow; Students create sculptures from old cardboard

By Dan Chavez, Staff Reporter | Photos by Dan Chavez

Walking by the Student Resource Center one can see that some Art students have put together a sculpture garden for other students to admire, made out of card­board to not only represent conservation but to also go with the theme of the RecycleMania competition CNM is competing in this Spring semester.

Art Instructor, Jennifer Johnson’s 3-dimensional design art class designed and set up the garden on January 28, with plans to dismantle it on February 11, provided the weather does not destroy the exhibit before then, Johnson said.

All of the projects were made with recycled materials that students pulled from nearby dump­sters, as well as reusing old wire clothing hangers to tie the pieces together, Johnson said.

“Instead of using costly art supplies, they decided that they would use recycled mate­rials,” she said.

Johnson said that painting the sculptures was not allowed because the overall project theme was about recycling, and painting the card­board would make them non-recyclable.

Johnson said there were teams of two or three students and they worked collectively to come up with the theme.

The students in this project could not construct closed sculptures, which means construction had to be open and transparent for people to be able see through, she said.

“They came up with a concept and they had to create in planer or sliced form con­struction, which is planes that are slotted and attached to create the dimension of the form. It’s also known as open sculpture,” she said.

Johnson said the stu­dents had a week and a half to develop a concept, complete the sculpture, and install it on the grass area near the SRC.

Johnson said the students worked during class time and in open studio hours to com­plete their projects.

Fine Arts major, Amelia Sierra-Wilkirson said she helped to create a sculpture titled “The Kite.”

Sierra-Wilkirson said her group’s concept was chil­dren climbing a tree, which she thought became ironic, because the team was com­bining a tree with cardboard made from wood, which is also recyclable.

Sierra-Wilkirson said her group began to like the con­cept so they went with it.

Once Sierra-Wilkirson’s group had all the pieces cut out, their sculpture took about five hours to construct, she said.

“We had it all planned out and we thought, ‘this is going to so be easy!’ It wasn’t,” she said.

Double major of Film and Veterinary Technician, Kristen Saiz said she was part of the group that constructed “Party Rhino,” who was sitting on the ground holding a bottle and having a good time.

Saiz’s team worked freestyle to create the sculp­ture’s pattern which made for a somewhat difficult task, she said.

She said that the project was a lot of work for a very short period.

“Party Rhino” took about 12 hours to complete and Saiz said she was happy with the outcome, she said.

“I’m pretty pleased with it, overall,” Saiz said.

Art major, Kristin Fleming and studio arts major Kale Beck constructed “The Feast,” which was a cooked turkey with ants marching toward it and a large fork stuck in the ground.

Fleming said some of the other teams had living animals in their projects, so for a dif­ferent approach, they decided to construct a cooked animal.

Beck said this proj­ect took between 10 to 15 hours to construct over the course of a week, and that designing the sculpture was not too difficult.

“We kind of just winged it most of the way,” he said.

Their sculpture prop was of a fork, which was a chal­lenge to keep in the ground, he said.

Beck said despite the long hours, he mostly enjoyed this project.

“But it’s been pretty fun,” he said.

Double major of Fine Arts and Mechanical Engineering, James Carrasco said he worked on a team with Sandra Lopez to construct a sculp­ture titled “The Planar Problem-Frustration.”

Their concept was an elephant trying to figure out a ball, which he finds compli­cated, he said.

Carrasco said his team’s sculpture took about 16 hours to complete.

Fleming said that one requirement for the proj­ect was that the sculp­ture has to consist of two things interacting with a prop, which limited them to animate objects.

“The hardest part, I think, was figuring out how to put it all together, we had a good design but then getting it to actually fit together,” she said.