Hi I'm Jana from the Art Gallery of
Ontario. Today we're gonna do an activity
called soft sculpture. So when you think
of sculpture you should be thinking of
something that's three-dimensional, it's
got volume, it's got mass to it. And the
cool part about doing soft sculpture is
it kind of spins the preconceived notion
of what sculpture is - it flips it. People
think of sculpture being hard like made
out of marble and clay and this isn't
that it's gonna be soft sculpture. So the
other cool thing is that it uses
materials you can find around your house,
like fabric or old recycle things that
maybe you wanted to donate. I think we
should have a look at some of the
materials we're gonna use today. So the
first thing you need to gather is the
fabric that you're getting used for your
soft sculpture, so I'm gonna show you
what I gathered today. I had a couple of
felt sheets at home, I had some nice
yellow fabric left over from a project, I
have some nice pattern fabric, I also
have some pantyhose - which is a great
material for this project because it'll
really stretch, and it'll take the shape
of the stuffing. I also had some foam
sheets which I'm gonna say are soft so
why not use them for your soft sculpture
today. The other thing you can do is look
in your cupboards in your closets and
find old clothing. Here's a pair of pants
that have a hole in it, which means I
can't really donate them and this is
amazing fabric to make a sculpture out
of. The next material you want to gather
it is something that's gonna help you
seal the seams of the fabric, so you
could gather glue it give it tape it
could be a stapler or even a needle and
thread - really whatever you have at home
just remember always make it
age-appropriate of course, a hot glue gun
is one of my favorite things to use but
if you're a younger person make sure
you're doing this activity with an adult.
Same thing with the needle and thread,
another thing to notice if you use white
glue it'll take a long time to dry, so
you might want to seal your seams with
white glue and let it dry overnight
before you stuff it the next day. The
last material that you need to gather is
whatever you're gonna use to stuff your
soft sculpture with. So just remember
you're not gonna see this material it
doesn't matter what it looks like as
long as it gets the job done. So I've
gathered some pieces of Kleenex, you
could also use paper towel,
I've also gathered a grocery bag that I
had and I just took it and ripped it
into pieces you can crumple that and
stuff your sculpture with that.
I also have some leftover fabric, so if
you remember I pulled this material to
make the outside of my sculpture but you
can also take that and stuff the inside
of your sculpture too.Now totally
optional for decorating your soft
sculpture at the end you can gather some
paint if you have it at home or anything
else like markers or colored paper
whatever you have.
Now that you've gathered all your
materials you have to decide what do you
want your soft sculpture to be. So really
your imagination is the limit you can
make anything that you want what about
building an entire city that's a soft
sculpture the buildings, the cars, the
people - what about the animals. Maybe you
could make a soft sculpture that's
abstract, it's more about forming shape
color and pattern. One of my favorite
things to do frankly cuz I'm a little
bit hungry is to make a soft sculpture
that's food, something that you would
want to eat. maybe your favorite food.
There's a cool artist I'm thinking
of Klaus Oldenburg who did a series of
food soft sculptures in the 60s. We're
really lucky we have one of those pieces
in the AGO collection, it's called the
Floor Burger it's a massive soft
sculpture of a big juicy burger - it's a
very cool piece and I hope you have a
chance to see it. So I'm gonna think
about what kind of food I want to make
from my sculpture. I'm gonna think about
kind of dinner first,
I'm thinking maybe a piece of pizza. So
I'm going to show you how I'm gonna make
my pizza soft sculpture. So first I'm
gonna look at the fabric that I have and
I'm thinking I'm gonna go with this
yellow fabric because it kind of reminds
me of cheese, so I'm gonna take this and
the easiest way to make a soft sculpture
is think of the shape of what you want
to make. So I think of a slice of pizza
being a triangle I know that I'm going
to need a top and a bottom to my pizza
because I'm gonna seal those seams, I'm
gonna glue them or I'm gonna sew them
shut and I'm gonna stuff it to make it
puffy and soft. So I'm gonna take my
fabric, I'm gonna fold it in half and
then I'm going to draw a triangle on
here to represent my piece of pizza. You
know the other thing to remember is when
you draw your shape make it a little
bigger than you want it to be in the end,
because what
you seal the edges so that you can stuff
it you're gonna eat up a little bit of
your shape, so if you make a tiny little
triangle and then you seal your seams
you're gonna have a little teeny tiny
piece of pizza which maybe you want a
mini piece of pizza I don't know but for
me I want a big piece because I'm hungry.
So let's get your scissors and let's cut
this out.
Okay now I've got my two triangles for
my slice of pizza and now we have to
seal them and make them glue together
everywhere except for one area because
we need it to be open so that we can
stuff the sculpture. So I'm going to grab
my two favorite methods which is using a
needle and a thread so if you want to
use that you can just take your needle
you can get some thread on there and
then I would do something called a whip
stitch where essentially you're just
gonna poke up with the needle into the
fabric and then you're just going to
keep coming around whipping it around
and making a stitch around you're a
slice of pizza.
I'm really for video the faster way to
do it is to use a hot glue gun, so again
just remember if you're a younger person
make sure to have an adult with you
because it's very very hot. And I'm gonna
glue all the seams, except for I think
the top I'm gonna leave the top open.
Okay so no just remember, if you are
using that hot glue it's very high so
even as I'm patting the seams and being
really careful not to burn my fingers. So
you're gonna want to leave that for a
minute or two just so it cools off a bit
and then you're going to stuff it. So
let's have a look at the stuffing
material I have it's the same material I
had before that kind of ripped up
grocery bag some extra fabrics and
tissue I'm going to use the Kleenex and
I'm just going to stuff it in.
So sometimes it's helpful to use
something like a pen or a pair of
scissors and you can just poke that
material all the way in.
Great so now I have my pizza, it's
stuffed it looks like it's ready to go
but I need to seal that top scene so I'm
going to go back to my glue gun and do
that.
Amazing so there is my soft
sculpture pizza it doesn't look quite
finished yet though right I think I need
a crust and I need some toppings, so
before I do that I'm going to show you
how to put together one other soft
sculpture and then we can finish both
the pieces at the same time. So once my
pizza is done I'm gonna be hungry for
dessert and I'm kind of feeling like
some chocolate cake, so this is I'd say a
very simple version of a soft sculpture,
the body of a soft sculpture I'm going
to show you one now that's a little bit
more complicated. So I'll show you how to
dry it if I wanted to make a slice of
chocolate cake, I would draw it kind of
three dimensionally.
Let's get that angle there. Okay so let's
turn that around see you can see that's
what my chocolate cake is gonna look
like, I might even have a little bit of
icing in there and I might even have
some decoration on top - we'll see how
fancy I get. So I have to figure out how
many pieces of fabric I need to make
this, it's not quite as simple as the
pizza we made before. So I'm gonna need
just from looking at this diagram one
piece that's a square or a rectangle, I'm
gonna need two pieces to make the top of
the bottom that are triangles and I'm
gonna make two pieces for the sides that
are rectangles, so sometimes I find when
you draw it out it makes it much simpler
to understand. So I've already cut out
those pieces, I'm gonna show those to you
so here are my two triangles at the top
on the bottom of my cake, here is my
piece for the back of my cake and here
are the pieces for the sides of my cake.
So again I'm gonna glue these together
really quick and then stuff it and then
I'm gonna show you how to finish these
off and make them a final soft sculpture.
 
So now I'm going to show you how to
stuff this piece that's very similar to
the last one so you can see I've done
all of the seams for a three-dimensional
piece of chocolate cake but I've left a
bit open at the top and at the bottom
here and I'm going to stuff it from both
sides.
Okay now that stuff I'm going to see all
the seems.
Okay now I have my two different pieces
of soft sculpture, food soft sculpture
I've got my pizza which is ready to
finish and I've got my big slice a
chocolate cake and can you see my pizza
is much smaller my chocolate cake is
huge because frankly this is what I want
to be eating right now. So I'm gonna show
you how to finish it ,we've got different
materials that we can use so I've showed
you some already, we've got the felt which
you think I'm gonna use maybe for the
crust of the pizza and maybe for the
icing and the chocolate cake but we also
have some paint too, so let me show you
how to do that. Now that I have my paint
we're really ready to decorate. So I
think I will start with the pizza, so I
know I mentioned before I want to put
some crust on there, so I've cut a piece
of crust out of the felt. I'm gonna take
a second and just glue it on, the other
thing that you can use is that really
fun foam sheet material and the nice
thing about it is that it comes with a
priest sticky backing which is just
super convenient for this. So there's my
crust and then I've already cut out some
shapes from that sticky foam so I'm
gonna do a vegetarian pizza, I'm gonna do
some green pepper, I'm gonna peel off
that sticky back and just stick it on
there, I'm also gonna do some tomato now
you might want to make this a pepperoni
if you're hungry and you're feeling like
pepperoni whatever you like this is your
pizza and then I'm also gonna put a
black olive on there I know
controversial choice, but I'm feeling the
black olives right now. so I'm gonna call
that Pizza soft sculpture done. I think
it's really nicely decorated, it's not
over fussy, I had fun with it it looks
like a nice piece of pizza . So let's move
on to the chocolate cake for this one
I'm going to use some paint which is a
little bit more like what Klaus
Oldenburg did and really he actually
made a piece of chocolate cake soft
sculpture so this is very much inspired
by him. I've got some paint here I've got
some brown and then some white and brown
that I'm gonna mix together, so maybe
I'll do that first.
I'm figuring that the brown is going to
be for the cake and then this lighter
part might be for the icing on top.
So I'm gonna do a quick paint job have a
look.
Now for those of you at home you might
want to put down a big piece of
newspaper or maybe craft paper on your
table, but I've been doing this for a
while so I'm going to be a little risky,
I'm just doing it over the cutting board
here.
Now that I finished painting my piece of
chocolate cake my soft sculpture we're
gonna decorate it just like we did with
the pizza. So I've made these little felt
roses they're supposed to be like little
icing roses and I'm gonna glue on to the
top. I've also cut up the strip of felt
which I can glue along the side like a
bit of icing in the middle - just remember
have fun and the biggest thing about
this project is not to get too fussy
about it use any fabric you can find at
home as long as you're allowed to use it
the preference is always recycled
material of course or something you're
about to throw out. Remember when you're
sealing your seams that you can use glue
tape, staples like really anything that
you have on hand and then again when
you're decorating, use paint if you have
it - but if you don't you can just cut out
stuff even paper color it in and just
slap it on so have fun have a good time
with your soft sculpture and make sure
to share your finished projects with us
at the #agofromhome and #agomakes
Please enjoy ,share with us
everything that you've made and I hope
you join us again soon. bye-bye
