One of my favorite activity week projects was creating the Louise Nevelson inspired box frames. Louise Nevelson was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures. Her unique artistic style was influenced by the Cubists and the found object sculptures of Marcel Duchamp. She called herself “the original recycler”, Louise Nevelson is most famous for her found object assemblages, mostly made of wood and painted in a solid monochromatic black or white.

As our school runs a house system, Aspiration house- green, Diversity house- red and Endeavour house- blue, I used this as the theme colours and the students worked in their houses to create a large collaborative  artwork. My technician created three fantastic multi box frames one for each house. of Marcel Duchamp

To fill the frames I hunted around at home and brought in as many bits and pieces I could find. All those little toys that no longer get played with, plastic lids basically anything that I could recycle.  Obviously what I found was not enough so the students went out for a scavenger hunt. They searched the school and grounds collecting bits and pieces to use for the box. They came back with bottles and cans, pen lids, sticks, stones keyings, an old computer mouse, cds and cassettes.

The students arranged the bits and pieces in the boxes, some wanted uniformity and some where haphazard. We found an old pair of shoes to use in the box. Whole they where to bulky but a trip to RM and a trim on the band saw they created a great aspect to the frames.

We stuck the pieces down using a no more nails type glue, it worked well and the pieces were held securely to the frames. We used an acrylic based spray paint to get the monochromatic finish. The colours went on smoothly and gave the  effect I was looking for.  The frames look fantastic on the walls and the students love trying to spot all the different objects in them and which they found.