Lesson Plan #3: 11th and 12th Grade Personal History Sculpture Project

This project has been a journey for our Juniors and Seniors. The prompt was: What is your personal history, and how can you translate that into cardboard? This followed critical engagement with two standout contemporary artists, Abigail Deville and Jacolby Satterwhite, who each deal with ideas about history and the self in mixed media. Students have been immersed in a full studio practice with this project. They began with introspective writings, then moved onto drawings, paper models of their ideas, and finally built sculpturally with cardboard. Each of these stages are significant and consist of substantial art works in their own right. Now armed with Xacto knives, scissors, glue guns, and probably more cardboard than they’ve ever considered keeping around, students have been maneuvering steadily through this latest phase of the project. They may laugh (or cry) when I say that they have been confronting the value of struggle with materials that are challenging to work with. Their commitment to their ideas and innovative problem solving in this multifaceted project has stuck with me, and I’m excited to see where they continue to take these!