Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Positive and Negative Tower


Quite often when teaching sculpture to my grade 9 class we talk about the use of positive and negative spaces and the need to be conscious of not only the shapes we create, but also the spaces around that shape. A good little task to emphasise the point in three dimensions involved the students creating a small freestanding tower in black cardboard.

This is a quick exercise in which the students create an abstract design within a rectangular template. This is then traced and flipped to create a symmetrical version of their design. The students need to quickly identify what are the positive areas (the black card) and what would be cut away to create the negative spaces. Once this is done they are then able to cut out the negative areas with a small scalpel knife. The process is repeated with a second piece of card and slots are added to enable the two pieces of card to stand without using glue.

While each sculpture in this exercise stands around 20cm it would be interesting to build larger scale versions, as in the end they are quite interesting forms. The use of symmetry and repetition combined with positive and negative shape are certainly effective. Something that is recognized by quite a few contemporary artists and now also by my young group of grade 9 sculptors.