This is the blog for the Waitsfield Elementary School Art Program in Waitsfield Vermont. This site is maintained by Nora McDonough. It contains photographs and information about past and current art projects completed at all levels, K-6.
The Global Cardboard Challenge is an annual event presented by the Imagination Foundation, which celebrates children’s creativity and the role that communities can play in fostering it. This event was inspired by the short film “Caine’s Arcade,” a story of a young boy’s cardboard creations. This project encourages kids to collaborate, innovate and think outside the box. Click here to learn more about the importance of creativity.
Here's a slideshow of our Waitsfield School Cardboard Challenge!
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000) was an Austrian painter, architect, and sculptor best known for his architecture characterized by colorful, ornamental, and biomorphic shapes. He initially gained acclaim for his paintings, but later became more renowned for his unique architectural styling. In the 1950s, Hundertwasser began designing architectural projects. These designs use irregular forms, and incorporate natural features of the landscape. The Hundertwasserhaus apartment block in Vienna is one famous example. This building has undulating floors, a roof covered with earth and grass, and large trees growing from inside the rooms, with limbs extending from windows. He took no payment for the design of Hundertwasserhaus, declaring that the investment was worth it to "prevent something ugly from going up in its place".
Hundertwasser was against monotonous architecture, and called for a boycott of architecture with straight lines, and demanded instead creative freedom of building, and the right to create individual structures.
Fifth and sixth graders are using cardboard to make their architectural creations. We watched this video that describes unique ways that cardboard is used for construction.
This project truly took on a life of its own! After looking at several examples of paper relief online on Pinterest, I set out cardboard squares, glue and piles of white paper, but I gave very few instructions about how to proceed. Artists experimented with rolling, folding and wrinkling the paper to create these magnificent sculptures. Then we set up a photography station using black paper, an overhead projector and the iPad. Students used basic photo filters to emphasize the way the light hit their creations. So beautiful!
