Matías’ Favorite Project of 2022/23: Soft Sculptures!
My favorite project of the school year was creating SOFT SCULPTURES with my 4th and 5th graders at Muscota New School: P.S.314. It was really great to watch them sketch out their designs and then actualize them with materials not typically associated with building sculptures.
Using felt, thread, and fabric, artists delved into the process of sewing. Sewing requires a level of time, patience, and attentiveness that transformed the energy of the studio. While spring with upper elementary artists can become loud and chatty, instead our studio was abuzz with students slowing down to make intentional decisions on how to successfully construct their 3-d design using felt and thread.
Here are the steps we took to realize our ideas:
Sketch it out! Artists sketched out designs for their soft sculptures using pencil and paper. Because the ultimate result would be 3-D, they were encouraged to draw their designs from multiple perspectives. Many artists chose to do portraits of pets or other animals. It was particularly interesting to see some of them re-interpret various ready-made objects and figure out how they could render them using felt and thread.
Make the detailed front facet! Artists cut out the front facet of their sculptures using felt and cut out smaller pieces to articulate specific details on their sculptures. The process was almost identical to collaging, but instead of gluing the pieces together they sewed them together. The color of the thread and the spacing between stitches also became important and some artists even used the stitches to render certain textures and lines as embroidery.
Make the detailed back facet! Artists cut out an identical silhouette for the back of their sculptures and added sewn smaller details. They were encouraged to imagine and think about how the details on the back of their sculptures would be different from the front.
Make it 3-D! Artists sewed the front and the back facets of their sculptures together leaving a large enough space to add polyester stuffing in between. Once the sculptures were stuffed, artists finished completely sewing the front and back together.
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