A house with windows made out of construction paper and newspaper.

Special Sunday: Paper City

Erin Christie

February 7, 2012

January’s Special Sunday was designed by Erin Christie as part of her final Art Studio internship project. She planned the activity, sorted and prepared the materials, and introduced visitors to the project throughout the day on Sunday, January 29th. Continue reading below for her description of the day:

One Sunday a month we have an additional art activity in The Studio for visitors to try. This month, the project I designed allowed visitors to explore the process of building with paper.

A yellow paper building with light blue windows.

Visitors started with an array of colored construction paper, newsprint, coffee filters, and cardboard. They created by folding, bending, crumpling, and taping them together into sculptures.

An orange paper sculpture on a drawn road with small cardboard wheels.

The final part was a collaborative effort to construct a city with their creations. I covered a long table in black paper and drew a road. The rest of The City’s design was up to the visitors!

A child making a house out of yellow and green paper.

One little boy shared his sculpture, a row of connected houses, as he explained. They were from all over the world, an igloo made from an upside down coffee filter and a taller tree house with a rope ladder.

The project created quite an experience, producing a deeper understanding of manipulating paper and an eclectic neighborhood (including a miniature Eric Carle Museum!)