art imitation diy: aaron curry/alexander calder

If you made to the Alexander Calder exhibit at the Nasher this past winter than you saw the work of Los Angeles sculptor Aaron Curry, whose big, playful steel sculptures are a direct riff on Calder’ themes. There is more of Curry’s work up now at the Nasher in a show called Statuesque, a show brought down to Dallas in collaboration with the Public Art Fund in NewYork. These new Curry works at the Nasher are flashy neon pink and green — pops of Pop culture and play in the middle of the city. They are joyful, rogue-ish, and sort of like giant, bizzaro Eames elephants.

Curry’s work seemed like a perfect fit for the art projects I do with my kids when I have them go to town with my (real) art supplies, making a serious mess of our dining room, but there’s some pretty rocking art on the flip side. Understanding that Calder and Curry sculptures are basically put together using the principles of a model airplane — notch to notch secure points that hold the structure together — we attempted to make our own mini-Curry/Calders, with great success. Here’s how we did this super easy, really fun project.

What you’ll need to make sculptures about 6-8 inches wide and high:

stack of thin cardboard (we used left-over gift boxes, which worked perfectly)
pencil
scissors
acrylic paint (we used a set we scooped at Oil and Cotton for only $5!), though you could really use whatever paint you have lying around
paint brushes

What to do:

have the kids draw out big, bold shapes on the cardboard

cut shapes out
plan out the sculpture using the cut-out shapes keeping in mind that it needs to be self-supporting, so pay attention to balance (we suggested the kids think of animal bodies:tails, four legs, long necks, which helped them think of ways to balance their pieces)
cut notches in both pieces of cardboard where you want to secure pieces to one another
paint individual pieces, allow to dry