Paper Relief Sculpture

Relief sculpture is an art form that is midway between painting and sculpture in the round. It is a process in which the subject stands out or projects a surface from the background. The surface can be several levels including high relief (deep or almost in the round) or low relief (shallow) or anywhere in between.

 To create their relief sculptures, seventh graders first learned about the difference between shape and form. A shape is two-dimensional (it has height and width) whereas a form is three-dimensional (it not only has height and width but also depth). Students experimented creating forms out of basic paper shapes by rolling, bending, folding and gluing them. After trying a variety of forms, students chose their favorite and created sixty variations of that form. Students then considered space and balance to position their forms into their final sculptural arrangement. These look awesome on display as they protrude from the wall- it's hard to really see the depth in these individual photos, but the shadows and dimension are super cool up close! 

Some photos of the students folding, rolling, arranging and gluing: 

A few finished works:

* The idea for this lesson came from a March 2005 article in School Arts Magazine