CASE STUDY papier mache sculpture

Funarte (Community Art Organisation), Estili, Nicaragua

September ‘09 - December ’09

Theme: The Environment

May!eld Arts Newbury HouseArt Action Toolbox: Case Study Papier Mache Sculpturesbackground

Facilitators:

Vanessa Maumelat, Orla Borreye and Laura Wade (Ireland)With support from the sta" of Funarte.

Participants:

Groups of children in Estili and neighbouring towns that Funarte work with.

Orla, Vanessa and Laura travelled to Nicaragua on a Youth In Action European Volunteer Service (E.V.S.) for three months in 2009. The three volunteers worked with the community art organisation Funarte in Estili. Fun-arte are famous for their murals, which adorn the city walls giving it the title of ‘The City Of Murals.’ May!eld Arts Newbury House have been working in partnership with Funarte for many years and have also hosted Nicaraguan volunteers in May!eld on EVS programmes.

The theme of the this project was The Environment, and each of the groups researched animal and plant life in their local area and globally that are at risk fromextinction in preparation for creating the sculptures. The participants wanted to express the colour, variety and beauty in nature, and why it is so important that we are good to the environment and all of the living crea-tures around us.

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HOW DID WE DO IT?Step 1: Getting Started

Step 2: Creating Large Sculptures

Step 3: Finishing & Exhibiting the Sculptures

We decided together with the children that we wanted to use recycled materials and focus on the environment and the animals around us. We began by making small and easy sculptures of !sh and birds. To create a sculpture of a !sh "atten a plastic bottle and cut the mouth piece o# two other plastic bottles (it’s better to get an adult to do this). Tape the two mouth pieces onto the "attened plastic bottle to create the eyes. Cut out !ns and a !sh tail from plastic or card and tape this to the "attened bottle. Dip strips of newspaper into the glue & water and paste onto the bottle. Build up two to three layers, leaving each layer to dry before beginning a new one. Finally paint or cover in a collage.

To create birds we used the same process we used for the !sh, but we didn’t "atten the bottles and we scrunched up newspaper for the head, and cut out wings instead of !ns! To create large sculptures (e.g. elephants) we cut out an elephant shape from strong cardboard. We used images of a side pro!le and front pro!le of an elephant to draw the shapes. We cut out each part seperately: the main body, the legs, the head, the ears and the trunk. Then we made cuts half way into each shape so that they slotted into each other and the frame could stand by itself. We did this part without the children because it involved using blades. We then taped the frame to a large piece of cardboard on the ground.

We began building up the legs of the elephant by taping newspaper and other materials to them to make them strong. We completed the papier mache layers on the legs before working on the rest of the sculpture. We then bulked out the remainder of the sculpture with newspaper and plastic bottles and covered it all in 3 layers of papier mache, and !nally painted it. A collage of magazines would have also looked great but we didn’t have access to these materials at the time. We exhibited the sculptures in the city hall in Estilli, hanging the birds and !sh from the ceiling, and placing the larger free-standing sculptures around the space so that people could walk around them and enjoy them from di#erent perspectives.

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IMAGES OF THEFINISHED WORK

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