This project is made out of paper plates. The goal of this assignment was to make anything using paper plates that reached a height of 2 feet. Unlike a lot of others who went in a more abstract direction, my partner and I decided to make a sculpture of a cow. We folded the paper plates into cylinders and attached with tape to form the legs and the structure of the body. We folded smaller paper plates into pyramids to be the hooves, ears, and snout. Below is a progress photo from when we were first able to stand the structure up on its own!
My motivation in creating this project has been experimentation. So far, I have just had fun getting to know a new material, starting with the paper plates. I found it frustrating how the edges of the paper plates curled upward, so I was attracted to forming them into cylinders, because the edges were tucked inside. I thought that they would probably be a sturdy way to get height in our challenge of building to 2 feet.
This piece represents artistic exploration and freedom for me. Throughout all four years of high school I went through rigorous traditional art training, so taking classes in New Genres has been really enjoyable and freeing, allowing me to work with new and unfamiliar materials that do not have such rigid rules. Before taking this course, I never would have thought of paper plates as a material to make a sculpture out of. This project also helped me to mesh my math and art brain, watching the circular plates fold up into all kinds of different shapes.
