Recreate Ancient Ruins with leftover cardboard
You’ll just need a cardboard box and a few basic tools to create these ancient architectural ruins, inspired by the wood sculpture Pompeii by artist, architect, and furniture designer Po Shun Leong. This project can serve as a launching point to design your own imaginative architectural realm from cardboard scraps!
About the artist:
A man of many talents, Po Shun Leong creates complex wooden sculptures and boxes reimagining ancient sites like Mesa Verde, Pompeii, and Petra. He works with many different types of wood, and encourages artists to recycle their scraps into new art.
“Be joyous, use all your … scraps, and add to the sum total of beauty in this world.”
-Po Shun Leong
Supplies:
• Corrugated cardboard
• Medium- large bowl to trace
• Scissors
• Strong glue, like Elmer’s Glue-All or Alene’s Tacky Glue
• Masking tape
• Paper towel for wiping hands
Optional:
• Ruler
• Extra cardboard (paperboard like cereal boxes, paper towel tubes, etc)
Tips:
• To glue cardboard, add glue then hold the pieces together and count to 20.
• Use a small piece of masking tape to temporarily hold cardboard together while glue dries.
• Wet a cardboard box and leave it outside to dry to easily separate the corrugated layer from the smooth layers. The water dissolves the glue!
Steps:
Option: For younger artists, provide cereal boxes, tubes, and lighter paperboard, which is easier for young artists to cut and manipulate. Pre-cut some basic corrugated cardboard shapes to help trigger creative thinking.
Challenge: Start with a larger base and incorporate other recyclable materials into your design.
Simplify: Don’t worry about measurements and rulers, just start cutting shapes and let the process happen organically!
Learn more: Po Shun Leong’s website is a treasure trove of interesting information!
This idea brought to you by Leslie Strauss.