Large?, Acrylic and Cardboard, 2024

I got the idea for this project, embarrassingly, from tiktok. I’ve seen many different things on my for you page about making different animals and objects from cardboard, and I’ve always loved music, so I combined the two. It also took inspiration from a clay sculpture I made my sophomore year, where I made another red guitar, but just much smaller and out of stoneware clay.

I started making this by finding a decently proportioned guitar to trace. I didn’t want one with too long of a neck because it could break. Then I projected it onto large cardboard cutouts and cut them out using an exacto knife, box cutter, and cardboard scissors. This was probably the hardest part! Then I lined up how it would fit together and began painting each respective part. I made the body red, the fretboard black with silver, and the pickguard white. I then glued everything together by putting a generous amount of glue onto the pieces and leaving a pile of books on top to hold it down. Finally, I trimmed down the excess glue and cardboard.

There isn’t any symbolism behind this piece, and it doesn’t mean anything to me beyond being something cool to look at. 

The most difficult part of this whole ordeal was cutting out the cardboard. I had to do it in such specific ways because anything else would hurt my hands or bend the part I needed to be straight. If I started over, I probably wouldn’t change anything. I think that, given how hard cardboard is to work with, I did everything to the best of my ability.

I think that this would fall under realistic because every time I have it in the hallway someone always comes up and says “Woah! I thought that was a real guitar! Cool!”.

I love that it matched my room. A lot of times, I make things that don’t match my decorations or posters, but this blends right in!