This entry is a dedication to one of my colleagues who is moving on this year and led this sculpture project. Emre, you’ll be missed!
Our slum housing sculpture projects was based on a sculpture called “1000 Shacks” by Tracey Snelling. The materials were very simple: cardboard (preferably used), rulers and box cutters, hot glue guns, and paint. We had this sculpture in a large multi-campus exhibition and it was a big hit! People spent lots of time exploring the intricacies the student work.
The project also ticks off a lot of boxes. It’s a great collaboration with humanities classes. It’s also great team or group-work project. It teaches how to use recycled materials for art pieces. It can teach empathy and understanding (I designed investigation and reflection sheets aimed at the exploring the causes of slum housing and imagining what it could be like to live in marginalised community). I teach very wealthy students, so this angle worked for my classes. If I were teaching in a poorer neighbourhood, like when I was in north Philadelphia, I would probably change the investigation a little.
The key to this project, sculpturally speaking, is making “L-joints”, which are really simple. You need to cut hundreds of small rectangles out of the cardboard to fold and then glue behind the walls when you make a corner. The houses are 3 sided (we didn’t make a back wall).
This project was done with year 8 students. You could teach this to older students too, but I wouldn’t go any younger because of the dangerous materials (knives and hot glue). After each slum house was completed, we took a picture to print and put in the student’s art journal. Afterwards the houses were glued together into a giant group, reminiscent of many of the slum houses outside of major Latin American cities. Our sculpture had a simple wooden post behind the sculpture for support.
I’ll attach images of the sculptures and the investigation sheet. As always, I would try making one first before teaching this art unit.
Images: the sculpture at multicampus student show, details of the sculpture, a photo for the student art journal (individual house), investigation sheet from a student art journal, reflection and investigation sheets.
Draw, Paint, Think 