Post #191: The Art of Cutting Cardboard

There’s something very rewarding about working with an inexpensive, disposable material like cardboard. I’ve been a fan (short for “fanatic”) of this cheap, endlessly versatile material for decades now  

First of all, it encourages experimentation; you won’t hesitate to toss failures into the recycling bin. It’s not $5 Arches watercolor paper you’re wasting; it’s just refuse you were going to dispose of anyway. Cardboard is easy to cut and, while hard to repair, cheap enough to throw out and start over. I buy it in  4’x8’ triple ply sheets from a warehouse in Norwalk. They take 2’ off the top so the boards fit into the back of a standard pickup truck. You can cut it with a single-edge razor blade or an x-acto knife and if I’m strong enough to cut through, so are you.

The use of “humble” material like cement,  cardboard or scrap wood and metal was encouraged by an avant-garde art movement known as  “Arte Povera” that  arose in Turin in Italy in the 1960s after World War II. It extolled cast-off, “found” materials in lieu in of expensive, often unavailable traditional art supplies. It’s a great way to encourage taking risks.

I’ve done several interesting projects with sheets of cheap cardboard as well as with discarded cardboard boxes. They’re unlike anything you’ve seen before. My first magnum opus was at an exhibit at the Westport Art Center of a group that called themselves “The Boxists.” Traditionally slick, mostly former well-known illustrators, they got stuck with me against their better judgment. However, my higgledy piggledy 8’ pyramid of discarded Supermarket boxes stole the show. I lit them from within and filled them with ‘real life’ figures.

My next experiment with cast off cardboard was a dozen, larger than life cut-outs based on the gangster- developers who were making fortunes trashing my beloved city. I included their equally disreputable  accomplices and their friends and family.

They were my artists’ way of getting even.