Lesson Plan One:

Sculpture Inspired by Fletcher Benton: Freedom Within a Square

This lesson plan is inspired by Fletcher Benton’s “Folded Square Alphabet” series of sculptures. It uses a two-dimensional square as the starting point for sculpture.

FOR ALL GRADE LEVELS

Decide when you would like to share information about the artist under study, Fletcher Benton. If you have time only for a very short lesson in which the students make sculpture, show this after they have completed their sculptures. If you want to be able to explore his working methods in a longer project, share this information early during the project.

Show the PowerPoint Presentation Fletcher Benton: The Alphabet. Make sure to point out that he began with a square piece of paper, too!

Objectives
Students will understand the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional.
Students will understand how geometry can be a creative starting point.
Students will create a three-dimensional artwork from a two-dimensional piece of paper.
Students will synthesize learning in a presentation to the class describing what they did and what their sculptures represent.

Materials
Scissors
Transparent tape
One 8–inch square of paper per student
Photos of Fletcher Benton’s “Folded Square Alphabet” series, including drawings, paper maquettes, and sculptures

Explain to your students that the paper is two-dimensional and that all flat things are two-dimensional. Find other two-dimensional objects in the classroom (for example, posters, the blackboard’s surface, the flat screen of a computer).

Reveal that each student will magically transform a two-dimensional square into a three-dimensional object. Make an example ahead of time to show students. For this age level, it is easiest to show an abstract sculpture.

Only One Rule! They MUST use the whole sheet of paper. They can use many methods for constructing their sculptures: rolling, cutting, tearing, taping, slotting, tabbing, folding—anything they want! Make sure to include each of these in your example. Below are photos of two exemplars.

Display the students’ finished sculptures and have each student describe what he or she did and what (if anything) his or her sculpture represents.

NYS Standards
Arts Standards Numbers 1–3
Mathematics, Science, and Technology Numbers 1 and 7
English Language Arts Standard 1

Objectives
Students will understand the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional.
Students will understand how geometry can be a creative starting point.
Students will create a three-dimensional artwork from a two-dimensional piece of paper.
Students will synthesize learning in a presentation to the class describing what they did and what their sculptures represent.

Materials
Exacto knives for older students
Scissors
Glue sticks
One 8–inch square of paper per student
Cardboard for the sculpture bases
Pencils (optional)
Photos of Fletcher Benton’s “Folded Square Alphabet” series, including drawings, paper maquettes, and sculptures

Group Activity: From Two Dimensions to Three
Divide the students into three groups, and give each student an 8–inch square piece of paper. Have one person from each group draw from a hat filled with possible subjects, which could include:

Airplanes
Butterflies
Cars
Cats
Dogs
Elephants
Trains
Trees

Choose a topic yourself, for example, cats. Demonstrate making a three-dimensional paper cat of some sort from your piece of paper, without using a pencil to draw. Use several paper techniques, such as slotting, tabbing, folding into a fan, gluing. You don’t need to be literal! You might just include the shapes of the whiskers, the ears, etc. Point out the way positive and negative space creates elements of the sculpture. Demonstrate looking at the sculpture from all sides, making sure to create visual interest from at least three viewing perspectives.

Ask each individual in the group to make a sculpture of their assigned subject. If they have trouble getting started, you might provide them an assortment of pictures of their subject, gathered from the Internet (but these are only to be used for inspiration!). The only rule is they must use every piece of paper from the original square. Encourage them to look at their sculpture from all sides, and adjust shapes to make sure it is interesting from all viewpoints. Be supportive of all attempts, and make sure to encourage original solutions.

Glue each sculpture onto a base sheet of cardboard. Display all the examples of each subject together and discuss them.

Possible Approaches to the Discussion
What is similar about the sculptures? Are any of them the same? Compare them all. What shapes did students use? What methods and paper techniques? Which ones have more detail? Which ones have less? What was the hardest part about making the sculptures?

Additional Study
Students can choose which sculpture they prefer and then recreate it in cardboard. The sculpture might need to be dismantled and the pieces traced for the cardboard version. So that the students can remember how to put the pieces back together, have them devise a method so that they can make a copy. Options include numbering the pieces and indicating with pencil where pieces attach, taking photographs from several angles, etc.

Choose one color to paint the entire cardboard sculpture.

NYS Standards
Arts Standards Numbers 1–3

VARIATIONS FOR GRADES 6–12
Students should select a set of objects or symbols to inspire a series of sculptures. Tangible sets might include:
Mathematical Symbols: (Satisfies NYS Standards Numbers 2 and 3 in Mathematics, Science, and Technology)
The Periodic Table (chemistry elements): (Satisfies NYS Standards Number 4 in Mathematics, Science, and Technology)
Car company logos
Yoga poses
Sports teams logos

Intangible sets might include:
Emotions
Tastes (sweet, sour, salty, etc.)

Select six members of your set and make a sculpture representing each one of them from the same starting shape—an 8-inch square. Remember, the finished sculpture does not have to be immediately recognizable as the object or symbol it represents, but the entire sheet of paper must be used.

If you have time for a longer project, have them sketch their options on squares. This will result in more planned-looking sculptures. They also may need quite a bit of time to sketch and then attempt the sculpture, and then start again.

Another variation would be for them to sketch their design first, then make cuts along some of the lines and attempt to make a sculpture WITHOUT CUTTING ANY PIECES off of the square.

Reproduce each favorite sculpture in more permanent materials.

NYS Standards
Arts Standards Numbers 1–3

Lesson Plan Two:

Sculpture Inspired by Fletcher Benton: Playing with Basic Elements
This lesson can be adapted for all grade levels.

Fletcher Benton has another strategy for working. He uses a group of small basic elements and combines them in different ways to create small sculptures. Then he looks at all the sculptures and decides which ones are most interesting. These he turns into large-scale sculpture.

Materials
Select a half dozen elements and give each student a half dozen or so of each. Some everyday objects that might be easy to include as elements are:

Cotton swabs
Peppermint puffs
Styrofoam packing pieces
Sugar cubes
Cotton balls
Toothpicks
Geometric shapes cut from cardboard

Ask each student to build a small sculpture using whatever means they can to get things to stay together—twist ties, glue, etc. Evaluate each sculpture using the evaluation included with this lesson plan. Choose one sculpture to make a larger version. Have each student build a version of that sculpture, adding color. Compare these sculptures. How are they the same? How are they different?

NYS Standards
Arts Standards Numbers 1–3
English Language Arts Standards 1 and 3

For All Grades
Fletcher Benton: Add a Descriptive Poem

The photographer, poet, and writer David Finn has written descriptive poemsabout all of Benton’s “Alphabet” and “Numerical” sculptures. Look at the photograph of the T and see if you think David Finn’s poem is a good description!

“Folded Square Alphabet T”

By David Finn

Round circle of steel
mirrors an open space.
A long diagonal line
ends in two right angles.
As one moves around the sculpture
detail views
show combinations of geometric forms,
with angles, curves,
open spaces, and solid squares.

(Reproduced, with permission, from David Finn, Fletcher Benton: The Alphabet. New York: Ruder Finn Press, 2005.)

Have each student write a poem describing the sculpture that he or she made.

Satisfies New York State Standards in English Language Arts Numbers 1, 2, and 3