Cardboard Spheres

Project 1: Cardboard Spheres, “Larger than Life”

I finally finished my third sphere this evening at the WASH complex. I have to say, thank goodness for that space, otherwise my roommate would hate me!

As soon as we were assigned the cardboard spheres, ideas began to form in my head; how to cut the cardboard, form it, fit it together… the whole assignment is about time and problem solving, really. Strangely enough, the first idea I got was for the third sphere, the one without any adhesives; I’ve done enough origami and put together enough cardboard toys to know how tabs and slots worked. But for chronology’s sake, let’s start with sphere #1…

Sphere 1, surface: This was the last one I did (I finished it just a few hours ago). I didn’t plan on procrastinating so much, but I really had no ideas at first! At least, not one that everyone else was going to have (pretty much everyone that I saw working at the complex was doing some form of paper mache). I woke up one morning with the idea of doing it like a soccer ball, you know, pentagrams in tiles? But I would’ve needed a protractor to get the angles right so it’d all fit together right, and it would’ve taken forever to do… plus, it didn’t really exemplify “surface” in anyway. In the end, I wound up taking chunks of board and gluing them together in circles, making a sort of bowl shape at first. The effect was a rough, chunky texture on the outside and feeling of constructing a bird’s nest (That’s really what it looked like up until I finished it!).  Regardless, despite a few shape issues, it all worked out and even though it’s a bit smaller than the other two, I’m actually pretty proud of it! Can’t wait to show it off tomorrow!

Sphere 2, construction: This was one of the first ideas I had and it was originally going to be my adhesiveless sphere, but when I got down to it, it didn’t work as cleanly as I’d hoped it would. Essentially, I took two cardboard circles and cut matching slits halfway through each one. Then, I was able to fit them together, ending up with two crossed circles. I meant to continue on in this fashion, slotting the circles together without glue, but I didn’t like how it looked, so I cut two circles in half, giving me (gasp!) 4 half circles, which I then glued into the corners of the two that had already been slotted together. Ta-da! This gave me a nice, star-shaped, inner skeleton of a sphere.

Sphere 3, no glue!: This one was an easy idea (the original, literally the very first idea I got, before Kelly even finished describing the assignment), but very difficult to actually assemble. It started off the same was as the last one, two circles slotted together, but with an additional two slots on either side of the first. Then, I took four more, slightly smaller circles and cut three slots into those as well. Long story short, after wrestling with some cutting mistakes (there’s no such thing as ctrl+ or command+ Z in real art!!) and some very stubborn cardboard (it made me break it! It was it’s own fault!!), I slotted everything together and got the nice little gridded sphere you should be able to see in a picture somewhere around here (hopefully).

And here's just some extra pics :)

So, there you have it! Got everything finished, chillin’ in my locker waiting for class tomorrow. Life lessons learned from this project: You WILL cut yourself and you WILL burn yourself. Knives are sharp and hot glue is hot and artists aren't the most focused people in the world. Go figure...

Anyway, I can’t wait to see what everyone else came up with in class tomorrow! Good night!

-Emily