Hasta La Ideas

An in-depth guide to innovative 3D forms and self-locking boxes

With the rising number of entrepreneurs among the creative community handling their own production, the value in high-quality DIY tips becomes increasingly essential. Whether you’re a Danish jewelry designer peddling pieces on Etsy, an artisan handcrafting leather belts in the Pacific Northwest or an urban partnership making ties from remnant fabrics found in New York’s garment district, the finishing touches—like original packaging—are not to be overlooked. Enter Paul Jackson‘s comprehensive new book “Structural Packaging: Design Your Own Boxes and 3-D Forms.” Packed with step-by-step instructions, the informational guide will teach any novice the fundamentals of bespoke package design or paper sculptures.

Jackson encourages reading the book in sequential order for maximum results, beginning with how to design the perfect net—the shape made when a box is unfolded flat, and the foundation for constructing any enclosed, self-locking polyhedron. According to Jackson, who describes himself as a paper artist, he was teaching modular origami when he had a game-changing revelation. Thinking about how modular origami units locked together, Jackson redefined net construction by creating “the strongest possible one-piece net to enclose any solid, based on the distribution and shape of the locking tabs.”

After the basics, “Structural Packaging” takes readers through steps on building square-cornered boxes and how to deform a cube, and offers insight on some common closures before finishing with a chapter on creating your own self-locking forms. As Jackson explains, there may be nothing new in 2D and 3D geometry as individual mathematical systems, but when thought about together, “they can be combined and deformed in a never-ending series of permutations to create a very great number of beautiful and practical forms.”

Any diligent student can master the art of innovative packaging by following Jackson’s comprehensively detailed instructions, accompanied by 175 illustrations. The book hits shelves February 2012 and will sell online from Laurence King and Amazon, where you can pre-order a copy now.

Skeletal sculptures find playful inspiration in grim materials

Like a collection plucked from an old Victorian curiosity cabinet, Suzanne Hagerstrom’s bone sculptures have the unanticipated effect of delighting the macabre corners of our childish minds. Far-removed from the trends and memes of the art world, Hagerstrom has been quietly producing the figurines for decades in pursuit of her own charming obsession. She creates anthropomorphic critters from her imagination, drawing from myths of impossible animals like mermaids, wood sprites and, sometimes, even the jackalope.

Hagerstrom works out of her studio in Sag Harbor, NY, where nature remains her chief inspiration. About the origins of her work, the artist explains, “I turned over stones all the time and collected snails and turtles. I had a garbage can with snake eggs that I watched hatched. I had a magical childhood.” To this day, Hagerstrom sources her material from nature, gathering up bones of long-dead wild animals and domesticated fowl. She fuses the bones with a clay that is baked and painted to match the off-white patina. The hair, she admits, comes from a number of sources not limited to clippings from her dog, a friend’s fur coat and her own locks.

“I love the idea of peering in, the voyeuristic aspect,” says Hagerstrom. While she admits her audience is limited to those with a stomach for morbid representations, it’s hard to deny her creatures are, in their own way, rather cute. They are convincing as well, as Hagerstrom relates, “People do ask, ‘Where did you find this?’ If I’ve painted them correctly, then they do look like living creatures.” She is fascinated by the story of a Fiji Mermaid, a hoax made of fish parts to resemble a real mermaid. “Of course it was found out, but I prefer to believe that, yes, that was a mermaid.”

Hagerstrom’s creativity over the years is truly inspiring. Some of her past work includes a piece called “Leda and the Dead Duck” as well as an autobiographical series that used her own hair to decorate the sculptures. “It is play,” she explains. “It is the best kind of play because it is a meditative play.” Explaining her standards for good art, Hagerstrom admits, “If I’m moved by it and there isn’t a vocabulary for it yet, then that’s something really special. That’s what I want to engage in.”

We initially came across Hagerstrom’s work at her exhibition at artMRKT in the Hamptons last summer. While Hagerstrom doesn’t have any current exhibitions in the works, she did hint at the possibility of an upcoming project that riffs off the Pinocchio tale. Interested buyers should contact Julie Keyes of Keyes Art Projects for pricing and availability.

Découverte de Canstruction, un concours qui a lieu chaque année au jardin d’hiver du World Financial Center de New York. Il met en scène des structures d’artistes composées de boites de conserve. Des compositions originales organisés à des fins charitables.

Previously on Fubiz

• National Geographic 2011
• Wire Sculpture
• Stop Motion Sculpture

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Walking along this elevated pathway by German artists Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth is like being on a roller coaster.

The 21-metre-high sculptural walkway is named Tiger and Turtle – Magic Mountain and is positioned upon a hilltop in Duisburg, Germany.

A staircase winds across the surface of the steel structure, which spirals around itself just like the fairground ride.

Above: photograph is by Werner Hannappel

Visitors can climb onto the sculpture where it meets the ground, but a loop-the-loop at the centre prevents anyone being able to walk a full circuit.

We also recently published a pavilion that snakes like the tracks of a roller coaster – see that project here.

Photography is by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth, apart from where otherwise stated.

Here’s some more information from the artists:

Since 13th of November the large-scale sculpture “Tiger and Turtle – Magic Mountain” by Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth is accessible for the public. Lately, the sleek curved shape of a rollercoaster highlights widely visible the highest peak of the park-­‐like designed Heinrich Hildebrand Höhe in the South of Duisburg.

The dynamic sweeps and curves of the construction inscribe themselves like a signature into the scenery and soar till the height of 21 meters. From a distance the metallic glossy track creates the impression of speed and exceeding acceleration. Viewed from close up, the supposed lane turns out to be a stairway which, elaborately winding, follows the course of the rollercoaster.

The visitor can climb the art work by foot. Although the course describes a closed loop, it is impossible to accomplish it as the looping emerges to be a physical barrier.  On top, at the highest point of the sculpture – 45 meters above ground – the visitor is rewarded with an extraordinary view over the landscape of the Western Ruhr.

Above: photograph is by Werner Hannappel

“Tiger and Turtle” refers with its immanent dialectic of speed and deadlock to the situation of change in the region and its turn towards renaturation and restructuring. While the sculpture conveys an absurd twist regarding the inherent expectation of the image created by a rollercoaster, it reflects its own role as potential trans-­‐regional lanmark which will be inevitably pocketed as image.

It counters the logic of permanent growth with an absurd-­‐contradictory sculpture that refuses a definite interpretation.With 44 x 37 meters base and 21 meters construction height the sculpture is not only one of the largest in Germany, but also a masterpiece of engineering.  Especially the draft of the stairs (developed in collaboration with Arnold Walz) consequentially and elegantly winds along the three-­‐ dimensional shape that is in every spot different and therefore harbours a so far never accomplished challenge.

Heike Mutter and Ulrich Genth create together artistic projects in public space and exhibition venues since eight years. Their works are site-­‐ specifically and contextually developed and reflect in a magnifold way the conditions of publicness. Since 2007 the artist duo lives and works in Hamburg where Heike Mutter holds professorship at the Hochschule für bildende Künste.

Clay sculptor swaps miniatures cities for hanging installations in this new retrospective

An artist obsessed with clay, Charles Simonds has been molding biological sculptures from the desiccate medium since early childhood. His prolific career received accolades early on for his miniature dwellings, which the artist began installing in various nooks around NYC and other international capitals before shifting to the gallery scene. The lilliputian natives of his imagination took their inspiration from American and African tribal communities, with a conscious dialogue evolving between the primordial clay and the primitive society. “Grown Walls” (2011), pictured above, shows the interaction of Simonds’ focus on life within his earthen medium. His long career has shown a steady progression, and his most recent exhibition, “Mental Earth, Growths and Smears” at Knoedler & Company in Manhattan—his first solo show in NYC in 13 years—tracks his recent changes.

The event marks his first retrospective in 30 years and demonstrates his evolution from miniature constructions to more permanent, epic installations. “Mental Earth,” a mammoth suspended piece from 2003, headlines the show. Measuring just over ten feet at its most robust, the photograph above hardly does justice to the scale of the piece. Also present are two porcelain sculptures, “Tumbleweed” and “Life, with Thorns”, which are distinctly lighter, more delicate takes on his theme. Simonds speaks of his work as “hypnagogic,” playing with the intersection between dreams and waking life. His message often paradoxically links the organic with the inorganic, regeneration with entropy. His deep colors and transcendent textures connote feelings that are often subconscious, evoking primitive and even evolutionary responses.

Pictured above are “Two Streams” and “Stone Smears,” both of which are recent additions to Simonds’ oeuvre. Last night’s reception kicked off the exhibition, which will run through 14 January. Knoedler & Company is located at 19 East 70 Street, New York, NY.