PS154 Pop-Up Page Making Family Workshop 5/25/2021

 

PS154 Pop-Up Page Making Workshop

5/25/21

Spica and I want to thank Haihong Chen at Flushing Town Hall for facilitating our workshop with students and families from PS154Q and Mr. Mario Arciniega for supporting us as the parent representative. We had a very enthusiastic small group of students, who created some amazing artwork in the hour we spent together.

Before beginning any art class, we believe it’s important to warm up our body and our imagination and as this is a class all about pop-ups, we began with a pop-up exercise in which we popped out our facial expressions and our bodies. After checking the students had all the required materials, we were ready to begin. 

Using colored construction paper, students created a Base Page onto which they constructed their pop-up home. As they all lived in apartment buildings, they used a complimentary half page of colored construction paper and turning it vertically they drew their apartment building. Before doing so they marked out 3” from the bottom of the page and drew above this line. Next, they collaged their home using small cut up pieces of colored or white paper. Brothers Samuel and Adriel, although living in the same apartment, created very different homes, Adrian’s being blue with yellow windows applied at oblique angles creating a very abstract effect. Samuel added vertical stripes of red to suggest the floors of his building. Ray chose recycled paper to create his apartment building and added squares of color to suggest the many windows. 

Once they finished the collage, they folded along the line under their drawing and cut off 1.5”. Next, they folded this “foot” up and cut out their home. Next, they opened out the fold, folded the house in half and carefully cut out a small triangle in the open section of the bottom fold. This creates a V Fold which is glued at an angle to the centerfold of the Base Page, thus creating the pop-up mechanism. Samuel, Adriel and Ray proudly opened their page to show how their apartment building popped-up.

In order to further personalize their pop-up page, the students thought of something that they could add which reminds them of their home. They took another piece of white or colored construction paper, about ¼ page in size, and drew the object on it. They also collaged this object having learnt the technique. Samuel created a red car, with a gumtree on the other side of the building. Ray designed a white tree and added green spots of color to suggest its leaves and also a pedestal coffee table. Adriel collaged a tree. On the bottom of each image, they had left a small tab which was folded over. Once they decided where each image should be in relation to the apartment building, they glued this tab down. Students created a layered effect with these objects making their opened pop-up page appear 3D. Adrian was interested in the mechanics of how to make this object stand up on its own, so they added a strut, which can be pulled into place once the page is opened. 

There was just time left to decorate the front of the page with their name.

It was so satisfying to see how engaged they students were in creating their very own pop--up page reflecting where they live.