How This Guy Makes Lifelike Cardboard Sculptures

[dynamic music]

My name is James Lake, and I am a cardboard artist.

I would describe my work as

cardboard sculpture in its purest sense.

I've been working with cardboards

probably about 20 to 25 years.

I very much like taking recycled materials

and building them into significant pieces of art

that people will hopefully be touched by

in an emotional way.

So getting down to the nitty gritty

of the sculpting process.

So we start with kind of a flat kind of design or a shape.

And then that shape is then turned into

a mass by adding extra pieces of card.

One of the beauties of kind of working with card

in small pieces, is I can actually take something

that will become part of a larger sculpture,

and I can actually hold it in my hands.

So you can actually see the different angles

that you need to kind of work on.

Once I've got these kind of angles

that gives me a sense of the overall shape and proportion,

I then start using pieces of card

that could become cladding as it were,

like you'd get on the outside of a house.

In the human body, you don't get right angles.

So essentially what I'm doing is working out ways

to kind of curve and kind of bend the card,

or press the corrugations together,

to actually mold round the form.

And then once I've got an overall kind of shape,

then I actually return to the surface details.

Now say, for instance, all the features like the eyes,

nose, and mouth, all kind of have

this kind of curved aspect to them.

So you are kind of thinking about

what is the right shape from the front,

it might be a drawn nose or a mouth.

And then you're kind of thinking about, well,

actually what happens when you curve that card,

does the shape kind of get smaller?

I find kind of where the fit to the sculpture,

that what finishes the work is actually the hair.

Now, when you think about hair, you think, well actually,

how would you replicate that in cardboard?

Essentially, you have to think about each area of hair

as its own separate kind of entity or section.

It's a bit like a very complicated jigsaw as it were.

And I don't always know quite where it's gonna go.

Okay, so this sculpture is gonna be called Youth.

It's about two, three weeks old.

So it's kind of fairly new in its conception.

This sculpture was quite a complex and tricky thing to do

because it's actually in the process of jumping.

The work is off the floor,

I think by about 15 to 20 centimeters.

It's held in place by a steel bar

that kind of runs through the downward leg.

So it needs to be fairly lightweight.

With that in mind, what I've done

is I've used a variety of lightweight cardboard.

So I've kind of been using some of this cardboard.

It's a honeycomb cardboard,

and it has kind of a strength to it,

but you can also press through it, and kind of mold it,

and kind of push it into position.

So I've kind of done that in a number

of different places around the work.

The different types of cardboard that I use in my work,

first, I use single corrugated card.

Now this is kind of the type of card

that you get in most kind of packaging

that you'll get delivered through your door.

And it's gonna be easy to bend and curve.

Now this card is just like a corrugated row.

It sometimes comes in packaging inside the kind of boxes,

but you can also buy it from different suppliers,

or they kind of use it a lot in schools.

And it's good for quick kind of covers

in between kind of structures.

This is a slightly more specialist kind of cardboard,

but I actually get this from a recycling

community resource center here in Exeter.

It has this really nice, corrugated filling,

which is great for strength.

And it's incredibly lightweight,

but it also functions well inside kind of an armature.

Another type of cardboard that I use

is this double corrugated card.

Now this is great in terms of

it's kind of more load bearing.

So you can actually put weight and pressure on this.

And this is really good for kind of building legs and arms.

And if you have a sculpture that's kind of standing,

and you want it to be strong, and upright,

and not to kind of move too much.

Now finally, this card comes in the packaging

that you might find in the supermarket

for soft drinks and things like that.

So it's really good.

It's actually really good to kind of paint on.

And that's kind of about it

with regards to the materials that I use.

Now, apart from the honeycomb cardboard,

I've been mostly using a single corrugated card

because that's gonna be quite lightweight.

And you can see the masking tape as well,

where I've kind of held it together.

Okay, so nothing in the sculpture's

kind of set in stone by any means.

But what I'll do is I'll kind of think about ways

that I could start putting in the structure,

and the detail, and the pattern,

from kind of pieces of card like this.

[scissors crunching]

So I've got a very strong kind of pair of scissors.

That's really, really important.

Now these scissors are kitchen scissors.

I think they're normally used

for cutting things like meat, or things like that.

So when it comes to cutting single corrugated card,

scissors work fine.

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The tools of my trade are very, very simple,

and kind of paired down.

I use cardboard, masking tape, hot melt glue gun.

I use scissors, I use a craft knife.

I very much like the idea

that when you're working with card,

it's brilliant to have a restricted

palette of colors as it were.

Because you don't have a sophisticated set of materials

you have to be really creative with the marks that you make.

So I've cut a piece.

And then what I'll do is I'll kind of work out

where it's gonna naturally fit.

And what I've done is I've kind of overlapped

the segments and the strips,

so that I'm containing space inside this sculpture,

just because I want to reduce the overall weight.

So this is kind of a good way to do it.

So it's a crisscross kind of lattice

kind of affair with the work.

So I'll just kind of adjust the shapes that I'm using

until I'm kind of happy with the piece.

And then obviously kind of run a bead of glue down...

The card.

Now a particular challenge with this piece of work

is that the glue itself has an inherent weight.

And with something that is so finely

and kind of delicately balanced

I have to allow for the weight of the glue in this process.

So with poses like this,

I tend to not use kind of too much in the way of glue.

So I try and kind of be as sparing as I can be.

The final stage for my work is actually looking at

how it might operate in its various dimensions.

'Cause sometimes there are bits that kind of get missed,

especially if I'm say sat in one position,

or say sat on the floor,

and I don't realize what somebody might view

as a spectator from a different angle.

So you can imagine making a piece of sculpture

in a small space, it's quite tricky.

You can also imagine making a piece of art

on one leg is quite tricky.

But when you combine the two,

you realize that can be kind of a bit challenging.

So in terms of kind of sealing the work,

I've used a sealer called Paverpol.

It's normally used as a fabric stiffener,

but it works as a waterproof agent.

Because there's nothing worse than say

spending a long time making something out of cardboard,

and then somebody comes along

with chocolate on their fingers,

and they kind of touch the work.

And then, you know, it's quite hard to repair.

So the waterproofing agent I use

acts as an extra layer on the card,

and to some degree kind of stiffens

the outside of the cardboard.

So it makes it kind of more resistant to damage.

I think what I'd like to tell people

working with this process is that there was

an awful lot in the way of trial and error.

So it's very different to say carving in stone,

where if you might make a mistake,

and I make so many mistakes with my work

that you would not believe.

And it's in those kinds of imperfections

that you kind of find the personality,

and the various kind of aspects

that make the work individual.

[Interviewer] Are you having fun so far?

[James laughs]

Yeah, I'm getting there.

So yeah.

I think my most favorite part of the building process

probably happens somewhere kind of in the middle.

Because I know roughly at this stage

what I'm gonna be making.

And I also know that I've got something solid in front of me

that I can relate to.

And at that point it's normally where the interesting,

inspirational, or unintentional aspect

to the work kind of emerges.

I think sometimes that the most complicated part

of the process for me is realizing the technical challenges

of kind of building something on scale.

My passion for making things out of cardboard

is something that I've kind of sustained for a long time.

I wouldn't know how to make it from any other material.

And I think I shouldn't need to really.

I've always hoped with my work that people will see

that you can make art from any material.

So if anything, I would like to kind of think

that I can inspire as many people as possible

to be able to make artwork.

I hope with the cardboard that it makes people

believe that anything is possible.