​Our school did it’s first school-wide PBL (Project Based Lesson) and as voted on by the district, “sustainability” was the winning theme. One of my classes focused on recycling plastic products through sculpture which you can see HERE. However, I have several students with sensory issues were adverse to using epoxy clay, so as I often do, I planned for an alternate exploration. Instead of recycling plastic, they were able to recycle fabric. According to www.earth.org, “Fast Fashion” is a huge contributor to global carbon emissions. “…fashion production comprises 10% of total global carbon emissions, as much as the European Union. It dries up water sources and pollutes rivers and streams, while 85% of all textiles go to dumps each year. Even washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibres into the ocean each year, the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.”
 
Students brought in old clothing that was headed to the dump and instead used them as a hand-weaving material. Each student did a little research into the weaving traditions tied to their own cultural background, and we used several YouTube tutorials to create our baskets. Some found weaving to be challenging but due to the nature of the lattice inherent to the technique, we turned some of these into sculptural works which was an unexpected surprise! I did make needles and thread available, as well as craft-like embellishments many students made use of. If I had to do this again, I would have students create a miniature sample first to get familiar with the technique. Instead they made small items if they finished early to keep students on task.
 
This is the video I created to show how we made our weavings. The core material we wrapped our fabric around was some macrame cord I had available, but any rope or rope-like material will work. To end our lesson, student hole-punched some index cards and wrote bout their experience and included a title for their piece. These were displayed during our evening sustainability program and were quite a hit.

​We explored the artwork and videos created by Stephanie Kilgast, particularly her discarded objects series. She has a wonderful YouTube channel HERE where you can hear her speak about her work and create her sculptures. As we explored her work we found that she works in 3 different modes, coral, floral, and fungi. She will also sometimes include animals, but we were focused on her environments and the juxtaposition of man-made objects and organic textures.
 
Students all brought in an object at home that might normally be headed to a landfill and using epoxy clay, gave it new life and hopefully bring attention to environmental issues for earth day.
 
Students brought in their objects and spent a day or two sketching from observation and adding on natural element within one of the 3 modes of coral, floral, or fungi. They could exceed expectations with details, textures, or creatures.
 
Sketches were shared with peers and critiqued before students were able to get clay. Because epoxy clay comes in 2-parts, we borrowed sensitive scales from our science department and measured 20 grams from each container to mix by hand. We were careful to separate containers by color and not allow cross-contamination. A timer was set for the last 20 minutes of class so students know they could not get additional clay at that point and needed to use up what was out. Those who had a bit too much shared with those who didn’t have enough to keep waste to a minimum. If there were extra bits, they were pressed into coin-sized amulets to be decorated as extras for early finishers.
 
Though we were working with 2-part epoxy clay all students had technology open to watch videos of Stephanie Kilgast make her work or searching polymer clay videos for coral, floral, and fungi. (Though polymer and epoxy clay are similar to work with there are more tutorials available for polymer clay. An advantage to 2-part epoxy clay is that it does not need to be baked to harden.) We had wire and foil available to make armatures to help the clay hold its shape. I also had some ceramic and dental-like sculpting tools for students to use in making details they saw in tutorials.
 
Once complete, sculptures were sprayed with a white primer and the organic details were painted with acrylics. For the most part we left containers white so that the color contrasted nicely to the man-made forms. This is something we observed in the work of Stephanie Kilgast as well.
 
All of the sculptures were displayed for a school-wide environmental PBL exposition. 

For more lessons and resources, please visit my publisher HERE.