Stone Soup

Marcia Brown’s “Stone Soup” is an inspiring story.  It is a story about bringing people together, about individuals contributing what they have to share and benefit the group.  In the story, a great feast is prepared despite the hard times and lack of food, beginning with only stones.

Photo Credit:  http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=3126183521747749942

“Stone Soup” is a story that can be seen as an analogy for design.  In the case of design, instead of food being brought to the table by individuals, it is ideas.  In my introductory design course, we were assigned to create “stone soup.”  With recycled materials and ideas to throw in the pot, a group of eight of us design students came together and made art.  This concept may be elementary, but it exemplified the creative design process.  The first step was looking at the mash up of recycled things we had to work with and begin planning our “soup.”

The pile of recycled materials included brown paper, denim, tire tubes, cardboard boxes, paper clips, tissue paper, newspaper, glitter glue, and more random things.  After deciding on turning our “soup” into a “tree,” the magic began.  With a basic plan in mind, we began to wrap paper and tire tubes around a light post.  From there the process became a free-for-all.  Everyone was throwing ideas out, and adding materials onto the “tree” left and right.  This was a fun project, and it really gave me an idea of how the design process works. Working with other creative people on an art project that had no rules, no boundaries resulted in a cool experience and a beautiful thing we called “Tree In a Box.” 

"Tree In a Box"  looks as if there is an industrial tree exploding out of a small cardboard box.  Made out of all recycled items, it expresses backwards recycling.  We created the art and assigned meaning afterwards.