Type of Submission
Art Exhibit
Proposal
Ideas fall through the cracks. Sometimes the ideas or plans that you believe will be the most successful are those that sorely disappoint your expectations. You fail an exam. You don’t get the job. The issue in your family escalates. The idea for your project doesn’t work out. Life does not go as planned. This sculpture aims to visually embody what happens when your bright idea goes “splat”. This sculpture was created using cardboard as the main base structure. The light bulb was crafted using cross-sections of cardboard filled with crumpled newsprint giving the base volume. This volume was covered with masking tape and then overlaid with layers of paper mache. To add the texture of ridges to the base of the light bulb, I removed the top layer of a strip of cardboard. The hole in the paper mache is ripping and cracking to resemble a cracked egg. Pouring out of the hole are the “drips” of the egg that were built from multiple layers of curved cardboard stacked on top of each other. Part of this “dripping” structure was covered in paper mache to relate it to the texture of the lightbulb and also to give it a smoother quality. The base or stand of the sculpture, consisting of 3 layers of cardboard cut into curved shapes, resembles an egg that just fell on the ground. The egg yolk made of stacked cardboard and paper mache is the only element in this work that shows color. The yellow serves as a balancing point between the overwhelming volume of the light bulb and the relatively flat surface of the base of the sculpture. While this sculpture shows that our plans and ideas may fail us, we serve a God who will never fail. Proverbs 16:9 reminds us that “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Copyright
© 2025 Hannah Pierce. All rights reserved.
Publication Date
2-28-2025
Ideas Splat
Ideas fall through the cracks. Sometimes the ideas or plans that you believe will be the most successful are those that sorely disappoint your expectations. You fail an exam. You don’t get the job. The issue in your family escalates. The idea for your project doesn’t work out. Life does not go as planned. This sculpture aims to visually embody what happens when your bright idea goes “splat”. This sculpture was created using cardboard as the main base structure. The light bulb was crafted using cross-sections of cardboard filled with crumpled newsprint giving the base volume. This volume was covered with masking tape and then overlaid with layers of paper mache. To add the texture of ridges to the base of the light bulb, I removed the top layer of a strip of cardboard. The hole in the paper mache is ripping and cracking to resemble a cracked egg. Pouring out of the hole are the “drips” of the egg that were built from multiple layers of curved cardboard stacked on top of each other. Part of this “dripping” structure was covered in paper mache to relate it to the texture of the lightbulb and also to give it a smoother quality. The base or stand of the sculpture, consisting of 3 layers of cardboard cut into curved shapes, resembles an egg that just fell on the ground. The egg yolk made of stacked cardboard and paper mache is the only element in this work that shows color. The yellow serves as a balancing point between the overwhelming volume of the light bulb and the relatively flat surface of the base of the sculpture. While this sculpture shows that our plans and ideas may fail us, we serve a God who will never fail. Proverbs 16:9 reminds us that “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.”
