Small is Huge

Living and teaching in an urban environment has its ups and downs, but one of my favorite attributes of city life is the opportunity to experience public art. One of my favorite sculptors, Claes Oldenburg, designed several large-scale public sculptures that are easily accessible in Philadelphia. His larger-than-life ordinary objects are whimsical and delightful and offer an engaging way to teach students about scale.

I recently took my elementary students to visit two of Oldenburg’s outdoor sculptures. Within walking distance from each other in Center City, Philadelphia are Paint Torch (2011), a 51' tall paintbrush accompanied by a giant blob of orange paint, and the 45' tall Clothespin (1976).

Visiting the Artworks
As we sat under these monuments to the mundane and everyday, we discussed why an artist might choose to make something so large. I love a conversation with students with no right or wrong answers. It led to us wondering what items we might choose to represent if we were commissioned to make large-scale public art. We also compared public and private art and discussed how outdoor art compares to art we might encounter in a museum setting.

Starting with a Clothespin
When we returned to the studio, I presented each student with a single clothespin. Artists start with ideas that change and evolve, and students got to experience that during this project. I explained that our project would start with sketching, our middle step would be building, and our final step would be to photograph our worlds in a way that helped the viewer forget the “real” world.

Building a Diorama
In their sketchbooks, students imagined a new world in which their clothespin would interact with the environment around it. It could be a real or pretend world, visited by humans or other species. As they narrowed down a habitat for their public art, they chose supplies to use to build a diorama. The scene was to include the clothespin (a tribute to Oldenburg’s sculpture) and tiny model people for scale. Students could incorporate drawing, air-dry clay, and any other available materials they might choose to complete their setting.

Students worked from their drawings and their own imaginations to create tiny worlds. Ideas quickly became more complicated; spaces became more fantastic. They built walls with cardstock, decorated with metallic markers, and shaped clay. Students who incorporated collage were especially excited to make their worlds strange and wonderful.

Moving to Photography
As the tiny worlds reached completion, students checked in with each other to see if any final touches were needed. I reminded them that our final step would be to take photographs that completely cropped out the outside world so the viewer could truly imagine being in their small, immersive diorama. While photographing, students should consider the foreground, middle ground, and background of their scene.
Students worked together with a shared tablet to photograph their scenes. With the addition of small railroad-sized figures, it was easy to grasp the intended scale of their work. They photographed the sculptures so they looked like they were in outer space or under water, and they designed grand parks and temples for art lovers.

Critique and Reflection
When all the work was completed, students took their small models home and we had the photographs printed at a larger scale. We hung the photos and had a brief critique, sharing which worlds we’d like to visit and which showed off amazing architecture. We discussed how photographing the worlds changed them, and the effects of cropping out any background details. Through this mixture of hands-on art-making and technology, students created some amazing tiny environments to house our tributes to Oldenburg.