Activity
In this project students create sculptures based on everyday objects.
Media
Sculpture
Materials
Everyday objects, optional: cardboard, fabric, paper, tape
Download This Activity
About Open Studio
Designed by practicing artists, the Open Studio classroom activities aim to connect high school teachers and students with key ideas and issues in contemporary art. See all of the Open Studio activities.
Robert Gober, Untitled, 1990; Beeswax, pigment, human hair; Collection SFMOMA, purchase through a gift of Rita and Toby Schreiber, by exchange, various donors, the Members Accessions Fund, the Lenore and Ira Gershwin Fund, and the Accessions Committee Fund: gift of Carla Emil and Rich Silverstein, Lisa and John Miller, Helen and Charles Schwab, Norah and Norman Stone, Danielle and Brooks Walker, Jr., and Robin Wright; © Robert Gober
I tend to make sculptures based on the things around me, like my own body, or common objects like sinks or boxes of tissues. My sculptures change the materials and the scale of these things, emphasizing certain features or distorting others. Those adjustments also change their meaning.
Consider an object that has meaning or resonance for you, either at home or here, on your person: your shoes, your bookbag, your cellphone.
Now imagine that you are going to make a sculpture of that object. What materials would you use? What features would you keep, and what would you change? What scale will the sculpted object be? How does each of these changes affect the sculpture you are making? How does the finished artwork relate to the object that you started with? Which is more special to you or to other people? How does the object change as it is filtered through you? If you were a different person, how might you have made the sculpture differently?
Make a model of your sculpture out of anything — cardboard, paper, fabric, tape, inexpensive things that you may have around you. Share it with the class and explain your answers to the questions above.
