Carboard Boxes

Think about how many boxes you have around your house right now.

Amazon packages, UPS deliveries, FedEx drop-offs. It seems like we are surrounded by more cardboard than any other time in human history. It shows up at the door, we open it, take out what we ordered, and the box goes in the trash. That’s the life cycle of cardboard for most people.

I started looking at it differently.

I was nerding out one day, going down a YouTube rabbit hole, and I came across people who use cardboard as an actual building material. Not just for packaging, but for prototypes, working models, and sculpture. There are artists out there who sculpt with cardboard. Real, serious work made from the same stuff sitting in your recycling bin right now.

That caught my attention, especially because I had more boxes than usual piling up in the house. They were out, right in front of me. And instead of seeing trash, I started seeing material. Cardboard can be shaped. It can be cut, folded, layered, glued. You can actually build with it.

The first thing I tried to emulate was Picasso’s paper guitar. Come to find out, Picasso had a whole body of work using paper and found materials to build sculptures. He wasn’t just a painter. He was building things out of whatever was around him. That was a source of inspiration, because it gave me permission to think about art outside of the traditional tools. So I gave it a shot. I grabbed some cardboard and tried to build something.

I’m usually apprehensive. I get stuck in my head saying it probably won’t work. You can find a million ways not to get started. But for whatever reason, this particular time, I just tried it. And I built something I was pretty proud of. It wasn’t perfect, but it was mine, and I made it from something that was about to be thrown away.

That small success opened a door. It made me question what else I could do. And that’s how art works a lot of the time. You try something small, you surprise yourself, and then you ask what’s next. But you’ll never know unless you try.

Building with cardboard became a part of what I do and it sounds crazy when I say it out loud. A former NBA player building sculptures out of Amazon boxes. But that’s where I’m at, and I enjoy it. The idea is to start with cardboard and eventually build up to more permanent sculpture. Will it work? I don’t think that’s the point. The point is to exercise the mind and be open to different materials.

Art doesn’t have to be paint. It doesn’t have to be a canvas or a sketchpad or an expensive set of supplies. It can be the stuff that’s already around you. The boxes in your garage. The materials you’d normally throw away. Use what you have and go from there.

Look around your house right now. There’s probably something sitting there waiting to become something else. You just have to see it.

Build with what you’ve got.