Media & Techniques
Ask the Experts, Episode Six: Sculpture
In the sixth episode of Ask the Experts miniseries, former Art Ed Radio host Andrew McCormick returns to the podcast and joins Tim for a discussion on sculpture in the art room. Answering questions from podcast listeners and the art teacher community, they discuss inexpensive and unique sculpture materials, the importance of process, their most creative projects, and so much more. Full episode transcript below.
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Transcript
Tim:
Thank you for joining us on Ask the Experts.
I’m your host, Tim Bogatz, and over the course of these episodes I will be talking with some art teaching experts and guiding us through a deep dive into a variety of different media. Each of the questions you hear today have been submitted by a member of our art teaching community.
No matter if you are a veteran teacher looking for new ideas, a brand new teacher looking for some guidance, or an experienced teacher who wants to up their game, I hope that the advice shared here about teaching each medium can help you.
As part of each episode, the show notes will include a plethora of resources to help your teaching if you want to learn even more.
Today’s guest is Andrew McCormick, and for those of you who don’t know, Andrew was the co host of Art Ed Radio with me for a long time at the beginning of the show, and even further back, the co host of the live show we did called AOE Live. I am thrilled to have him back for an episode here, and for all of you long-time listeners, I hope this is a welcome surprise. And of course we have a lot to chat about when it comes to sculpture. He has been teaching sculpture forever, and has an MFA in sculpture, so I feel like everything has come together for this episode! Let’s bring him on, answer some questions from the community, and get the discussion going!
Making his dramatic return to the show, Andrew McCormick. Andrew, welcome back. For those of the listeners that were not around in what, 2014, 2015, when we first started things a literal decade ago, can you give us an introduction to just what you’ve done as a teacher and then what you’re doing now?
Andrew:
So, I’m Andrew McCormick. I teach mostly middle school slash a little bit of high school art in the State of Iowa. I’ve been a teacher for 19 years. I’ve been in a couple different school districts, and Tim and I, we did this podcast for a few years and I think we probably stopped it five, six years ago or I kind of stopped doing it. I’m sorry. I stepped away from it a while ago. I needed to focus on some bigger, different things, predominantly just making sure my instruction was as good. I left the district, that was super phenomenal and super supportive to then a district that just required a lot more of my time and energy because I couldn’t quite do the same things I wanted to.
And the reason I say I teach middle school and high school art, it’s just by circumstance, seems like for about the last shoot, probably 12 years of my 19 years of teaching, I’ve always been in these weird hybrid buildings, which are seven, eight, nines or eight, nines. So I teach eighth graders and ninth graders. But right now, so I’m in Anthony, which is a suburb of Des, Moines, Iowa, just north of Des, Moines, and mostly teach eighth graders, but then I do a couple classes of ninth graders as well, that kind of intro level high school stuff.
Tim:
Gotcha. All right. Now the reason I wanted to have you on for sculpture is because you have a little bit of a, not even a little bit, you have a sculpture background, and I’ve always been impressed with just sort of the creativity that goes into your sculpture lessons, sort of your willingness to experiment and try new things, try some different things, and do some really cool things with your kids. So super excited to chat about all of this with you. And are you ready to get some listener questions?
Andrew:
Yeah, for sure. Yep.
Tim:
All right. So first one comes from Mario in New York and Mario says, “I’m having a hard time with all of the dangers that come with using plaster. I’ve heard you can burn yourself when it’s heating up. I know breathing the dust is really bad, I just don’t know if it’s worth it for my art room. What are the projects you do with plaster and how do you keep your students safe and healthy?”
Andrew:
For years and years, early on at my first gig, gosh… So it’s funny, as a teacher sometimes you don’t even know what projects are going to become sort of your legacy projects. A student will tell you, “I want to try this, I saw this,” and then you try it. And then every year, every semester kids come back and are like, “Are we going to do the thing where we put plaster on our face and we’re quiet for a whole class period?”
So my very first job, I taught halftime high school and halftime elementary, and I did the group project where you kind of partner up and you put plaster on your face and you make kind of a cast of your face. And I remember the first semester or maybe even two kind of being like Mario, a little bit like, “Oh gosh, things could go wrong. I’ve heard horrible things.” And it always went well, I think in the four or five years that I taught there, doing it twice a year, once every semester with a bunch of kids. I had one time where it turned out poorly, where I felt a little bit bad for the kid, and it was literally just they got some plaster dust in their eye. It was like, “Okay, let’s try to rinse that out. Let’s try and see if we can get it out.” But it wasn’t any of the really nasty things that you’ve maybe heard of.
So yes, plaster can become hot if you’re not careful. I think the two main mistakes people do if they are doing any sort of casting of body parts where they’re putting it on their arm, in the form of a gauze or even plaster Paris or on their face. I always did it with gauze, and gauze, the pre-plaster Paris embedded gauze strips doesn’t to me really have that issue. It’s if you’re taking a bag, a 50 pound bag, a 20 pound bag of plaster Paris and mixing that with water, that’s the stuff that I have found can get hot if you’re not careful.
So the one thing is if you’re mixing it with hot water, that plaster is going to set up much faster. And as a teacher where you’re like, “Oh, I’ve only got 43 minutes, I’ll use hot water.” Well, yes, you’re going to get the kids getting their plaster to set up faster, but it is going to get hotter too. It gets to that chemical reaction speed a lot faster. So I always just made sure to use cold water, and yes, it takes longer to set up, but then you’re not going to run the risk of getting that heat.
The things that you see online where people are like, “I got a first degree burn on my face or second degree burn.” It’s kind of a confluence of errors. They probably used hot water and they also did not use, and I know this sounds weird, any sort of releasing agent to then get it off of their face or their body part when it started [inaudible 00:05:46] like, “Oh, this is really warm.” So when we did the putting plaster strips on your face, and a lot of kids were like, “This is gross and grody.” But then they all kind of got into it, you got to make sure that you are putting Vaseline in the eyebrows along the hairline, that kind of on the side of the face where maybe you’ve got some wispy hairs. We started just totally avoiding the eye and leaving the eyes hollow because trying to put Vaseline on your eye or putting Saran wrap over your eye, it just became a lot.
And also kids when they’re in high school, they’re getting some peach fuzz, they’re getting full-on facial hair. You’ve got to kind of put Vaseline everywhere. And some kids will be like, “That’s a funky, weird experience. It feels like I got a facial, it cleaned out my pores.” And then some kids are mortified because it rips off their makeup. They look at the inside of their mask and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, I need to go to the bathroom and touch back up.” So that project, to me, that is a lot. And I feel like doing the whole putting of plaster, a Paris or plaster wrap on your face to create that mask is a cool project. But there’s probably some things you could do first if it is your first rodeo with plaster.
So one of the things I started doing was a plaster cast of a zombie hand, make a hand, but that is your hand. And it was a challenging project because the kids had to figure out, well, I can’t just… unless you’re using some really funky silicone mold type of stuff. If you’re doing it with plaster strips, you have to make a halfway point around every finger, do half of it, put it back together, do the other half, join it together. And then we would paint those, we would kind of adorn those with something. And that was a cool project.
And that one, it’s like, okay, the worst thing that could happen is if someone missed a little Vaseline on their wrist, they’re pulling a little bit of hair, but it’s not eyebrows, hair along their hairline, all of that stuff.
Tim:
No, I think that’s all really, really good advice. And I’ve had very similar experiences. And I said, I’ve never had a kid burn themselves or come close to burning themselves, but like you said, it really takes a confluence of multiple errors. So just got to be careful. And I guess I would just put the disclaimer out, whatever you’re going to do with your students, try it yourself first so you know exactly what’s happening. And then I’ll just add a couple things as far as just logistics and safety and whatever else. I always just cover the table with a big garbage bag, and then it’s usually super easy to clean up. I have masks available for all the kids so they’re not breathing in the dust. I know that’s always helpful for them.
And then when you’re mixing, like I said, don’t use hot water like you said, Andrew. And I would say don’t mix too much at a time. I usually just use small little eight ounce cups. I’ll put water in one, plaster in the other and get a craft stick, scoop the plaster into the water, form the island. You put the plaster in until it starts to create an island, then you can stir it up and get that reaction going. And like you said, small amounts, cold water, shouldn’t have any trouble with that.
But you had a couple good examples of projects I would add on. A lot of times when I mix that up, I will have kids just cast and they can carve or they can try and build, and we look at Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore just talk about form and a lot of the simple elements. And plaster, if you can get it smooth, it can look really beautiful in that regard. So I think that works. And then I love doing armatures too. Just out of foil is usually the best because that holds up to plaster, whether you’re doing the joint compound, the mix, the strips that you talked about, you can create figures, you can create whatever else you want to create. There’s a lot of possibilities there if you just do a foil armature. So just some suggestions for you there, Mario as far as what you want to do.
But Andrew, I appreciate the explanation on, I don’t know how to keep it safe and just kind of the run through on that.
Andrew:
I did want to add, because there’s one thing that even though I’m someone who has asthma and it’s like I often think the one thing I forget about or worry about, it’s the last thing I think about is ventilation. So making sure if you are going to be mixing up a lot of plaster, if you do have the luxury of having a little door and a patio and being able to step outside, that’s great. If you don’t and you feel like you are going to be making a lot of dust, someone showed me this trick a few years ago, which is to take a box fan, something that maybe you can buy fairly cheap at a Walmart or something like a $10, $20 box fan. And this person was just duct taping an air filter to the other side. So you turn it on and it pulls all the dust kind of through the fan, and then when it hits that air filter, it stops moving.
So I was like, “Oh, what a cheap and fast way.” Now that’s not going to be like OSHA certified and you’re not going to get the really tiny particles, but I thought for something like clay dust or plaster dust or sawdust, if you know it’s a one-time deal where you are going to be making more dust and maybe you want, I was like, “That is a really low-tech quick and easy way to minimize some of the dust you’re making.” Even just for the cleanliness sake, so you don’t have dust everywhere and the janitors get upset with you. I caught 70% of the dust is now all in this little air filter that I can throw away that I duct tape to this box fan.
Tim:
Yeah, that’s a really creative idea. I like that. It’s worth trying at least.
Andrew:
Yeah.I’ve used it a couple times and it definitely does pull stuff out of the air, which is cool.
Tim:
Okay, awesome. All right, next question. This is from Rhys in Oregon, and Rhys says, “I need ideas for inexpensive materials for sculpture. I’m out of budget money, but still a lot of time left in the semester. What can I do with cardboard? What other stuff might work?” So Andrew, any suggestions for cheap inexpensive sculpture materials and what we can do with them?
Andrew:
Well, I mean, cardboard to me is one of the most universal, ubiquitous materials out there. Everyone can get you cardboard-
Tim:
Maybe the greatest art room material that’s out there.
Andrew:
Yeah, for sure. There’s so much you can do in terms of venting it or just forming it. I always tell kids, “People who weld, people who sew, it’s that idea of taking a flat stock of material and figuring out ways of cutting it, scoring it, adhering it to make it be three-dimensional. So it could be map board scraps, it could be shipping scraps. I do a lot with masks. I do a lot with portraiture. That’s kind of my go-to, but you could make figures. You could do abstract work. One of the first sculpture assignments I used to teach when I taught an exclusive high school sculpture 1 class is that notion of flat stock to three-dimensional form.
So we would take some time and take a piece of chipboard, which is what a cereal box would be made out of, just making that be textured, funky with kind of some two-dimensional treatments and then curling it, scoring it, folding it, taping it, hot gluing it to make conical different types of forms. And weirdly… So we looked at the work of Frank Stella, which is someone normally who would not be on my radar of… Frank Stella is one of my all-time favorite artists. But it really fit that assignment well. And I liked what the kids made, and it was a week to two week project. I mean, it was pretty quick and easy.
I will say one of my all-time favorite materials to mess with, if you can find it, is styrofoam. So if there’s a big purchase in the district or people just happen to have styrofoam, you can cut it, you can shape it, you can re-hot, glue it together. I had some students just this last semester who on kind of sketchbook days or an open-ended day, they were just making the most amazing Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff architecture things I’d ever seen. Just breaking off pieces, gluing them together. And this one goes here and it’s like, “This is awesome.”
So I remember once when I was teaching in Cedar Falls, the P.E department, they got 30 new exercise bikes and giant boxes-
Tim:
Oh my gosh. Jackpot!
Andrew:
Tons of styrofoam. Oh, I know. And they were going to throw it all away. And I was like… I think there’s this weird internet meme on Instagram or TikTok where it’s this comedian talking about how art teachers are the homeless people of the teaching department because they’re always weird and they’re always finding weird stuff. And I was like, “Man, I have never been more seen and understood.” But it’s like, “Hey, are you guys throwing away that styrofoam because I could totally use that.” Styrofoam is great. I love it.
I do a project with styrofoam where we just call it abstracted forms. So we’re looking at the work of Henry Moore, is the second time he’s been referenced. But you can kind of melt styrofoam without carving it. That is totally an outdoor thing because I go to Walmart and I buy a propane torch that people use for plumbing, and if you get just far enough away, you don’t catch the styrofoam on fire, but you start to dissolve it or degrade it and it’s awesome. And kids are like, “Oh, we’re playing with fire and we’re melting stuff.” But that does have some fumes. So when we do our whole styrofoam melting thing, we definitely go outside for that one.
Tim:
Fair. That makes sense. I want to follow up with the cardboard thing because as far as logistics and how you teach that, I’m on the same page with you and everything that you’re showing kids. I generally show them the work of Claes Oldenburg and taking small everyday objects, making them very big. And then I ask them to recreate an everyday object out of cardboard. And there’s a lot of problem solving that goes into that. But I remember one girl made a three-foot tall lipstick that just made all of these cylinders, all these cool angles. I loved it. I’ve had shoes and purses and all sorts of great things with that. So I think that’s a really simple and really easy win for the teacher and for students. Just teach them about how cardboard works, how you can set it up structurally and then recreating an everyday object is always really good.
As far as other cheap things, just anything that you can get donated, anything you can find can definitely be worthwhile found. Object sculptures, like Louise Nevelson type stuff can be really, really good. And you can also go outside, incorporate some leaves, some sticks, some branches, some twigs, whatever you can find. Look at Andy Goldsworthy or other artists that are working outdoors, working in nature. And I think there’s a lot there that you can do that. Obviously it’s very budget-friendly, but you can get some interesting things done.
And then I will just recommend, I have a very old article on the AOE magazine, but it’s still a really good one. I think it’s called Six Inexpensive Ideas to Start the Year. And I just show some different stuff that I did with newspaper and oak tag and craft sticks and cardboard. But anyway, we’ll put that in the show notes. And there are a lot of ideas there. So there’s some good stuff out there that you can do for fairly cheap, I think.
Andrew:
What’s the saying go? “Necessity is the mother of invention.” So if you are hard up for materials and we’ve all been there and then it’s like, “Why do I have two tons of this material but nothing else?” It’s like whatever that two tons of material is that you have is then the thing that we think creatively with working with. So I know I had roles and roles and roles of the just door decorating cheap paper and all these different roles, so blue and purple and red, and it’s like, “God, I’m never going to use all this stuff because I don’t know, it’s not a great quality paper. What am I going to do with this?” So it’s like, “All right, we’re banging out some paper mache, we’re making our own paper mache stuff.”
So paper mache is another one of those things that I think sometimes it maybe gets a bad rap because it’s we’ve all had our horror stories with paper mache gone wrong, but pretty cheap. I mean, if you got paper and you got some flour and water or some glue and water, you can make a lot of stuff with paper [inaudible 00:19:16].
Tim:
A lot of possibilities out there with that. Good suggestion. All right. As I read this next question, I’m reminded, we just talked about blowtorches not too long ago.
Andrew:
Oh, yeah.
Tim:
So this next question is from Kyla in Missouri, and Kyla says, “I have a lot of power tools and hand tools in my room left over by the last teacher. Which tools do you let students use and which ones are off limits? How do you decide?”
Andrew:
Well, that’s funny. I don’t know if there’s been a power tool that I’ve met that I didn’t like that I felt was off limits. But to be fair, we are not a wood shop and we’re not necessarily trained to teach kids how to weld or how to use a table saw. Although if you’ve got access to that stuff… I guess it’s up to each teacher and if they feel like they can adequately and safely demonstrate it to everyone, and if they’ve got the trust in their students, that I trust all the students in this class can handle this and are prepared. I know that I have had students in the past that when I say, “Here’s a drill, I trust you, you can drill.” And they give you that look in their face where it’s like, “I don’t trust myself,” the student doesn’t trust themselves [inaudible 00:20:38] or, “I could do this for you.”
I don’t think there’s any shame in doing that too. You can explain to someone how to use a tool. You can show them how to that, you can give it to them. And if they’re ultimately afraid of the tool, that is not a great situation to be in. So I always tell students, and I learned this probably when I was 12 and helping my dad out in the garage, you should never be afraid of a tool, but you should have respect of a tool. So if you are afraid, you might make some bad choices or decisions, but you should have a good healthy respect for every tool to make sure you’re using it the right way. And then I would just say just be conscientious of the proper safety. So eye wear, ventilation, and then if you think you’ve explained it well, I don’t know that there is a tool that I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting a student use.
Tim:
All right, good answer. I’m aligned with you on all that. I would just say to everybody that it depends on your own comfort level, you know your kids, you know your own skill. There’s a lot that goes into it, but if you have any hesitation, if you feel uncomfortable at all, don’t do it. So that would be my biggest piece of advice. And I was actually thinking about my answer to this as you were answering there, and I think I came to the idea if it can cause a permanent injury, if we can literally lose a finger, let’s not do that. Let’s not let students do that.
And so I’m good with them using a drill. I’m good with them doing a staple gun if we’re adhering things or stretching canvas or whatever. But the band saw, the table saw, no, we don’t need to mess with that. And that’s where my comfort level is. And so I think, like I said, it’s just up to everyone who knows their own comfort level. They know their own students, they know the tools they have, and it’s up to you. But if you have any hesitation and you feel like the risks are far outweighing the benefits, just don’t do it. There’s no need to. Don’t risk it.
Andrew:
It’s funny. So I wanted to share a couple other things. So I had a wood shop teacher back at college when I was getting my MFA, and he mentioned something in working with undergrad students. He’s like, “If you can do it with a handsaw, why use a miter saw like a power tool. So he always steer students towards the least powerful yet effective means of getting the job done. I could use a chainsaw for this, but I could also do a little handsaw. So that has always guided me. There’s probably a better for what you want to do.
There are always a couple tools that I’ve wanted to have in my art studio that I’ve never had, and I could see students legitimately being turned off to them because they are a little intense. So I’ve always wanted to have a drill press and I’ve always wanted to have a miter saw for cutting wood at an angle. But then when I think about those two tools, I would probably, if I had an ideal art room, use those tools a couple times a year. You know what I mean?
Tim:
Right.
Andrew:
There’s probably a couple projects where those are really going to be handy. So then it’s like, well, I get why a student who’s 16, 17 years old who isn’t taking a woods class would be like, “I don’t need to learn how to use the miter saw for this one project on this one day.” And that’s what I feel like as a teacher, you can show it off, you can teach it to them, but you can also be like, “And I will be the one doing this when you should tell me where you want it to be cut at, et cetera, et cetera.”
So currently I don’t have anything other than I do… Like I said, I’ve got that propane torch that I keep hidden in my art room, so only I can use it. And when it’s time to use it, we all go outside together and I watch the students. I really don’t have anything remotely dangerous, I guess. I’ve got a couple hand saws, or not hand saws, power drills that we get out for one sculpture unit and then when we’re not using them, I put them away in the storage closet. No one gets them out. I have a pretty safe art room.
A few weeks ago I had a blow-dryer out, and the blow-dryer is just so students can, like, “I want to speed up this watercolor painting that is drying.” I had a girl who she was blow-drying and I don’t… Okay, I’m a bald human being, so I don’t worry about haircare a whole lot. And I’m just like, “Are students not using…” A blow-dryer is not a thing anymore because I had students who were like, “I don’t know how to turn this on. How do I do this? How do I turn it off?” And I’m like, “it’s the button. Read it. Up is on and down is off.”
And anyway, I had this student, she was blow-drying her painting and she kind of got too close to the blow-dryer and it pulled her own hair into the back of the blow-dryer where it was pulling hair from.
Tim:
Oh my gosh, yes.
Andrew:
And she got her hair stuck in the blow-dryer. And I was like-
Tim:
Oh my gosh.
Andrew:
… “I am so sorry.” It got hot, it kind of mangled it a little bit. So she had this little clump of 20 strands of hair. I was just like, “I don’t know.” Eventually she just pulled it, which caused a lot of… It didn’t hurt her, but it’s like, “Yeah, you just beat the heck out of your hair there. You go to a stylist and cut your damaged ends off or something.” But it’s just funny. So as a teacher, you never know what students are going to run afoul of. I never would’ve thought I had to do a blow-dryer safety conversation, but now I do. Now I’m like, “Hey guys, if you’re using the blow-dryer, make sure you don’t have super long hair, or if you do, tie it up, pull it back, whatever.” So it was fine.
Tim:
It’s always an adventure. We never know what’s going to be dangerous, especially when you’re working with middle schoolers.
Andrew:
Yeah.
Tim:
Yeah. Okay. Next question comes from Sylvie in Rhode Island. Sylvie says, “How do you convince kids that planning sketches, et cetera are a necessary part of the process?” That’s a good question.
Andrew:
Well, I think you’ll probably answer that one better than I will, because personally as an artist, that is not a strength area that I have. I’m impatient. I want to get going. I want to learn by doing. I want to make a project, have it be awful, and then scrap it and start over. I’m a jump in, learn while you’re doing, start over, throw it away type of person. I try to be well aware of that blind spot that I have in my own art making. So if it is important to you, my simple answer would be make it be part of their grade. It’s just like, “I am going to grade your planning and your sketches.”
And I would definitely show the work of Christo and be like, “So this work is not really something that can be permanent. It’s not something that can be commodified, but the sketches, the paintings, the drawings like that can be.” And I actually think some of those are really interesting. So I’ll just tell you this one story and then I know you’ve got better answers for this. But I used to do a project that was based off of Caine’s Arcade, which was the young boy who made arcade games out of cardboard. And we would do it in teams of three or four. And some of the students way more gravitated towards the planning, the mathematics of the numbers and the angles and the layout and the drawing.
Some students were far more into the aesthetics of what it would look like, the logos, the painting, and some were like, “I want to cut and I want a hot glue and I want to build this.” If you do some collaborative sculpture, I think you could have students who it’s like that is part of the role of the team is the sketching, the planning, the ideation of it.
Tim:
I like that. I will keep this as a short answer, just say that it goes all the way back to intro to art for me, where we’re having kids sketch, we’re having them plan, we show them the process of doing that. And like you said, showing Christo and Jeanne-Claude is a great example. They’re great sketches to go with some really amazing sculptures. So those always capture kids’ attention. And if you can find other artists that do that as well, there are plethora of examples out there. So just do a little bit of research and you can show them some good examples. But I think for a lot of kids, their resistance to that idea of planning and doing sketches is maybe a little bit impatient, a little bit of kids who are similar to you personality wise, Andrew.
But I think a lot of it too, is just they don’t know how. There’s a lack of knowledge, there’s a fear of failure or a fear of doing things wrong. So I would suggest to Sylvie and to whoever else is thinking about this, just reflect a little bit, think a little bit on how you can break it down for students and make it accessible, make it doable. And it may need to be step one for your sketch is going to be this, step two of your planning is going to look like this. And just kind of walk them through that until it becomes just a natural part of the process that you’re doing with everything. Just show them how and then once they know how, you should be able to get a little bit more, I would think.
All right. Next question for us, this is from Reagan in New Mexico. Reagan asks, “What is your best sculpture project for students who are lacking in fine motor skills?” That’s another good question.
Andrew: Boy, that’s a tough one. I don’t know if I’ve ever thought of one project that hits on that. So when I have eighth graders come to me, I would actually say most of them have lower fine motor skills than I’m expecting them to have anyway. So it’s kind of like a universal thing. I just do a lot with paper mache armatures. So when I say armature, I’m not even talking about making a wire armature first because I feel like that is too advanced for a lot of my eighth graders. We do that and get into that in ninth grade. I’m talking just take a piece of paper, dip it in something gooey, turn it into a spit wad. And I think most kids can like, “Okay, this is a wadded up gooey thing,” and then that builds up to something else.
So I do a project where we kind of do flat masks and I feel like that’s probably some of the lowest middle school skills or fine motor skills that are required because it’s just take a piece of cardboard, draw some sort of mask shape, take wads of paper and build it up from there. So another wad builds another wad builds another wad. We do some tape with that where if something’s too out of whack, put some tape over it to kind of combine it down. I feel like to me, that’s a pretty universal thing.
The one thing I would say though, so I have not had access to work with clay for many years. The building that I’m in isn’t properly ventilated and doesn’t have a kiln. So I haven’t taught clay-clay for a long time. I feel like there’s a lot you can do with clay sculpture, whether it’s coil building, whether it’s pinch pot, that’s a pretty universal thing of just messing with mud. Clay is mud and whatever you do… I’ve done a decent amount with CelluClay. So just the paper pulp, because it does kind of work and act like clay.
CelluClay was something that seven, eight years ago I thought was the most bogus, horrible thing in the world. I was like, “What is this monstrosity of an art material?” But when that’s kind of all you have that is kind of like clay, I’ve really come around to it and now I am like a CelluClay disciple. I love it.
Tim:
Okay. I know.
Andrew:
Yeah, I really, really like it. I make sure I buy 50 to a hundred pounds of it pretty much every year just to have on tap for whatever a student might want to mess with. The only thing I don’t like about it, I do not understand why this happens. It dries out your hands unlike any other substance I have ever used in my life.
Tim:
Interesting.
Andrew:
It is worse than clay. It is the worst thing ever. When we use CelluClay, I give my students gloves, latex gloves, whatever the non-latex gloves are. I’ve got those too. And let me tell you, that’s another thing that you have to keep hidden because if you just have those out for anyone to grab, you’ve got water balloons, you’ve got cow udders, you’ve got air balloon. It’s just like, “No, these are hidden behind my desk. I get them out. You have to ask for them and then I’ll give them to you.”
The CelluClay, I think you can do some really fun stuff with, especially if the fine motor skills are something you’re worried about.
Tim:
Yeah, I think that those are all good examples. I had just a couple extra ideas. Paper mache works great to do, just abstract figures. They don’t need to have any features. It’s got a head and some extremities, you’re good. And we will do an armature with just newspaper and tape and then paper mache over the top of that and that can work fine. A lot of times we’ll look at Keith Haring and do some different simple figures with cardboard or whatever other materials that are around. Those are easy ones. If you can cast anything with plaster, that’s maybe a little bit more advanced, but it’s super fun if you know how to do that to just cast an orange or whatever. It doesn’t take much.
But you can do some simple casting, which is a lot of fun and making mobiles and just get a little bit of wire, some cardboard, and talk about Alexander Calder or whoever that makes good mobiles and you can create some cool things with that. So there are a lot of ideas out there where you don’t have to be super precise, but kids can still find some success with those.
Andrew:
So I’m not done talking about CelluClay. I want to talk more about CelluClay. So I did a project once because again, not having clay where it’s like we looked at Funko Pops and it’s trying to make things that are more relevant or connecting to them. And it wasn’t Funko Pops, but there’s another one where the figures are just so minimal. It’s like a bean of a body and a round head and it’s like, you’re good. So we did a project around that, like you can make any sort of pop culture reference you want with just the easiest little cylindrical body, round head, little nubby arms, no detail. And we’re building it out. And I think with that one, we even did a paper armature or an aluminum foil armature just to kind of make the ball the body.
And I’ve done that project a couple times and it is now way better than the first time I did it. So the first time I did it, I have to share horror stories too. You have to share the worst things that ever happened. I actually think one of the toughest things with sculpture is not the materials. It’s not the safety. It’s not the know-how. The one thing that I think prevents a lot of art teachers from embarking on big, ambitious, funky sculptures is space and storage. Where the heck do you put all this stuff?
Tim:
You’re right.
Andrew:
And that is a real concern. And knowing where am I going to put a hundred pinatas? Where am I going to put 80 of these or 50 of these? That’s a real problem. So anyway, I was doing this Funko Pop Inspire project, and we had no storage, tons of kids. This is a nightmare. The only storage I had were in these shelves and I opened up the shelves and I put them in there, and then I had to close the drawers because otherwise kids were going to kick the doors and slide over and whatever. Well, wet, mushy paper, dark space. We got them out the next Monday and all the kids are like, “Why is my panda moldy? Why is my Skeletor moldy?” And it’s like, “Oh my gosh.” All of our sculptures had gotten mold on them.
And that was one of those things as a teacher where it’s like, “All right, we’re pivoting. We’re going to start over with a new project because I’m not going to make you guys mess with these moldy cellulite things.” So I know some teachers have had similar experiences with paper mache, paper mache can get moldy. I’ve heard there’s some hacks around that, isn’t it salt in your mixture or even some small amounts of Dawn? Someone out there much smarter than me is going to know this. I think especially if you do the flour and water, that’s the one that’s way more mold prone than the glue in water, which I usually do glue in water. But I’ve heard if you put some salt in there, the salt is supposed to prevent the molds from happening or maybe even some dish soap. One of those is going to work and the other one is probably going to be a horrible failure because it’s going to prevent the glue from actually setting up. Yeah. I think it’s salt.
Andrew:
One of those is going to be wonderful. And the other one is going to accidentally make napalm or something. It’s like all of your students have a biological weapon now in their classroom. Yeah.
Tim:
Oh man. Okay. It is time for us to move on after that. Okay. Question from Anastasia in Ohio and she says, “Most fun or most unique materials you’ve used for sculpture. Looking for creative ideas.”
Andrew:
So I already mentioned the one that I liked the most, and I think kids like it the most is styrofoam. If you can get chunks and blocks of styrofoam, you can… Like I said, you can melt it, you can carve it. There’s multiple ways you can carve it. It is messy. So we’ll sand it with rasps and files, but it gets fluff and fuzz everywhere. That stuff isn’t inhalable so much because it’s big chunks of it. It’s static electricity, it’s clinging to their clothes. So if we do that, we usually do it over a garbage bin if we’re really carving it or if we go outside for the fumes.
The other one that I do a lot that I think the kids like, but it becomes a bit of a logistical nightmare, is found objects. So buying stuff, bringing weird stuff in. So we did a project about Dollar Store hacks, how to box some stuff at the Dollar Tree or Dollar Store and then mess with it and make it better and make it more funky and cool. The problem is students are forgetting to buy the stuff that they said they were going to buy. “Oh, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this, and here’s my sketch.” They forget.
So I ended up going to the Dollar Tree and buying 30, $40 worth of craft that then I didn’t really need to or could afford to be doing that necessarily. So I think found object is fun, but be aware that either you might end up putting the bill or kids might be forgetful. So that’s the one thing. And then whatever funky weird stuff people donate to you… So my art room had 30 cans of poly, whatever it is, expanding foam, the stuff it… Great stuff. So we were doing some weird funky projects with that, but that was a one semester thing, and then we kind of went through all the cans of that, but you never know what someone’s going to donate or what you’re going to find. But that was fun.
Tim:
Yeah, I think that’s really cool. I am kind of disappointed that you didn’t talk about CelluClay one more time.
Andrew:
And CelluClay. Yeah, CelluClay.
Tim:
But going back to that idea that I mentioned with the cardboard objects, I had a kid who made a functional life-size couch out of cardboard. You could lay down on it. It was very long, could seat three people, and it was strong enough to hold it. She spent a lot of time figuring out the structure inside so it could support weight, and then made a really cool design on the exterior of it. And it looks so cool. So my reason for talking about that is that I think you don’t have to take it all on yourself as the teacher to be creative. Let the kids come up with their own ideas, with their own creativity. So you can give them the parameters of here’s the material, here’s our theme, go for it, and just see what you can get. So open it up to them and see what their ideas are would be my biggest piece of advice.
We’ve done sculptures with hot glue before. I went through way more hot glue than I thought. But just the change in thinking of how you use a hot glue gun and how can you make this three dimensional. We talked about that earlier with cardboard, going from two dimensions into three, that’s easy to do with lines. And we would just put the glue onto a mirror and then scrape it off and you could build up from there or just build on itself with the hot glue. So that took a lot of creativity. We got some pretty good results, but went through a lot of hot glue when we did that. It was a cool one though.
And just thinking about things that were donated. I got some giant chunks of wax one time, and we just melted those down on a hot plate that I got from the thrift store and just painted them onto an armature and created these weird wax sculptures that were pretty interesting. It was a cool experience. But yeah, just whatever you can find around, whatever you have. And maybe that’s the thing where you just say, “Hey, these are the materials we have. What can you all think of to build with them? That’s an option.
Andrew:
I have one more, and I can’t believe I didn’t say it. It has been a while since I’ve done this, but I always have bins of… So it’s back to found materials, but it’s a very specific found material, which is old discarded technology. So I would have people donate old computers, old VCRs, old whatevers, and letting kids get a couple screwdrivers, a hammer if needed, eye protection of course, And taking apart old technology to get out the circuitry and the batteries and the motherboards and the switches and the buttons and the LEDs. So I just have big giant totes on a cart filled with disassembled old guts of computers and stuff. And kids love looking at that stuff. They love using that stuff.
Tim:
I would love looking at that stuff.
Andrew:
A lot of it is dusty as heck though, and the kids get dirty. And every once in a while I did have a kid, they’re trying to unscrew something and they’ll slip and they’ll run their hand across the circuit board that has soldering on and like, “Oh, I have a scratch on my hand.” I mean, nothing major, but we would use that a lot for found object stuff. Even Louise Nevelson you mentioned before, found object, but with sort of a technology kind of lean to it.
And when I had students who were like, “I don’t have anything to do today. Can I disassemble some more computers?” I’m like, “Go for it.” And it kept them busy and they were excited. And that’s one of those things I just put out a call to parents like, “Hey, if you’ve ever got old technology, old hardware, screws, nuts, bolts, we will take that and we’ll just have bins of that crap laying around to mess with.”
Tim:
That’s fun. This is a side note, not about sculpture at all, but I had one of those bins of screws and bolts and nuts and whatever, and I had a kid do this super detailed graphite drawing. They took a picture of that and just all detail… Just such a fascinating drawing. It was such a cool subject matter. Took a ton of time obviously to get all that detail in there, but it turned out amazing. All right, last question. We’ve been at this for a while, so we finally made the last one. This is from Xander in Florida. I think it’s an easy one. “Who are your favorite sculptors to show to students?”
Andrew:
So funny thing, Tim, you know me pretty well. The first four that came to mind are all very traditional, formal, historical sort of blue-chip artists and artists that, I wouldn’t say they’re my favorite artists, but it’s like they resonate with students. So Henry Moore for sure, Giacometti, Frank Stella and Brâncuși. I just feel like they’re kind of good when we’re talking about form and abstraction. When we start talking about found object artists, I like Robert Rauschenberg a lot. One of my top all-time favorite artists. I love him. Gosh, over the last few years I’ve kind of gotten away from the filter of artists that I like. And I show a lot of Instagram videos of artists that I’ve stumbled across. And I feel like those little snippets of screen captures from my Instagram feed that when I show kids, it clicks a little bit more.
And I’m going to probably pronounce this artist, I’m going to pronounce her name incorrectly. She’s a Canadian artist. Laurence Vallières. I believe she’s Canadian. I believe French Canadian. She does some awesome stuff with cardboard and that’s all she uses is cardboard. She makes these giant animals. And then there’s a puppeteer that I like a lot, Sam Wilde. And again, it’s just cardboard, but his puppets are lifelike and they are mode and they’re awesome. And I think some of those more contemporary artists, and especially when kids know that they’re on Instagram and they can go follow them themselves, kind of resonate more than, “Here’s Giacometti.” And it’s like they like Giacometti, but I don’t know, some of that Instagram and those videos of how to’s and tutorials resonate a little bit better with students these days.
Tim:
Yeah, I think so. And I think as teachers we always find that more contemporary things, living artists always resonate with kids a little bit more. That being said, let me talk about Barbara Hepworth.
Andrew:
I’m not starting it with Brâncuși. It’s like, “Come on.” Yeah.
Tim:
Well, Bird in Space might be my favorite sculpture of all time. It’s perfect. But I love Barbara Hepworth. I love showing her to the kids. I love Maya Lin, being able to tell the story of the Vietnam Memorial, talk about another perfect artwork. Oh my goodness. And just her entire catalog of what she’s done is just incredible and has great meaning. And I also love Rachel Whiteread where she will cast in plaster entire rooms, entire libraries, entire apartment buildings. And it’s just fascinating to think about the logistics that go along with that. And students really seem to like her.
And then anytime that we just need to get a discussion going, we’ll get out Duchamp and his ready-mades or just the minimalist, like Carl Andre, he put a line of bricks on the floor. That’s it. And a lot of the minimalists didn’t even put things together themselves. They just made directions for how to do it and then hired someone to do that for them. And that really angers the kids as well. They didn’t even make it themselves. So anytime we just need to get a discussion about what does it mean to make art? Who does this? Who created it? Who is the real artists? Those are the artists that I like to bring out. So I always enjoy showing them.
Andrew:
It’s always good to make your students mad. Just get them really angry and irritated.
Tim:
I was going to say good to make them think, but if you want to take that direction, that’s cool too.
Andrew:
Yeah. That’s it.
Tim:
Fine. All right. Well, Andrew, it was great to have you back on the show. Great talking to you again. Thank you so much.
Andrew:
Yeah. My pleasure, man. This was fun. Appreciate it.
Tim:
Thank you to Andrew for his expertise, for making a return visit to the show, and for answering all of our questions.
If you want to continue your learning, I want to highlight a few of the links that you can find in the show notes.
We will link to three PRO Packs–two on sculpture, one for elementary and one for all levels, plus a really interesting one on exploring architecture through paper sculpture. Each of these PRO Packs have so much important knowledge, ideas for your art room and how to teach those ideas, and some great resources that you can use and some that your students can use. A great place to dive deep on some ideas about teaching drawing.
We are also linking to 3 collections from AOEU’s FLEX Curriculum. One is called 2D to 3D, one is called integrating sculpture, and one is all about sculpting with cardboard. There are some good lessons in there, and These collections also include videos, planning sheets, assessments, other resources for students, artist bios, career cards, and so much more.
We also have some additional resources that you might find worthwhile, including some magazine articles and podcast episodes with Andrew and other guests.
Finally, if you want to start on or improve your own drawing practice, we will include a link to the Art of Education University graduate course called studio: drawing.
Please explore, enjoy, and find the resources that are right for you and for your students.
Thank you for listening to Ask the Experts.
The show is produced, edited, and engineered by me, Tim Bogatz, and is part of the Art of Education University podcast network.
Stick with us through all of our episodes as we explore photography, ceramics, painting, printmaking, drawing, sculpture, and more. Thank you for listening!
Magazine articles and podcasts are opinions of professional education contributors and do not necessarily represent the position of the Art of Education University (AOEU) or its academic offerings. Contributors use terms in the way they are most often talked about in the scope of their educational experiences.
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