Paper Cuts and Glue-gun Burns: My First Project and First Challenges

With my first assignment I was ripped, roaring, and ready (I’m not sure I got that right). My creative juices were ready to flow! Our teacher gave us a great presentation on modern relief sculpture, with loads of pictures! Here were some of my favorites:

by Jeff Nishinaka
More of his work on Today Tomorrow: http://www.todaytomorrow.net/2010/10/12/jeff-nishinaka/

Counter Cosmo by Jen Stark
Check out her website for more amazing sculptures: Jenstark.com

Our assignment was to create a modular relief sculpture mimicking fabric or a wall covering made out of basic white index cards. We could cut them, fold them, crumple them up...anything to make an interesting shape with elements of 3D sculpture, while still being intended to lay flat. The shape also needed to be repeated over and over, with the possibility of changing slightly. I did extensive research finding shapes I liked:

Yes that's the Star Trek logo...

And made quite a few experimental shapes:

These are the good ones

And finally perfected one could work with:

My brainstorming process its really messy. To prove it here’s my sketches:

I don't always sketch in red...

I was thinking radial and expanding but upon construction and connection I found the shape made didn’t fit in the way I had expected to. It make the shapes pile up instead of lie flat, the problem was that my links were all about the same size but the sides I was connected were not the same length. I changed my design to be more logical and less complicated. It ended up looking like a repeating pattern of stars or snowflakes.