New Sartell High School Sculpture Class Turns Packing Tape Into Personal Art

(KNSI) – A new sculpture class at Sartell High School is giving students an unconventional medium to share deeply personal messages with their school community, packing tape.

The assignment, given by sculpture teacher Kara Poissant, asked students to wrap their own bodies in packing tape to create see-through, life-sized figures. Each sculpture had to carry a message for the school community and fit into a chosen space within the building.

Seniors Melanie Hammes and Kylie Wollak teamed up. Their piece shows a figure curled in the fetal position on a bench, knees pulled to chest, while a half-torso reaches out from the wall above with hands shaped like claws looming overhead.

Hammes said the piece grew out of something she carried with her for a long time. “I’ve struggled with mental health for many years, and so I try to put that part of myself that felt alone and felt like there wasn’t anyone who would understand me into this piece as a way to really show that time of my life where I wasn’t feeling comfortable or acknowledged.”

Wollak found her own way into the project by thinking about the transition into high school. “It’s so different than everything else, and having an older brother, you start to see more of kind of the underside and hidden academic pressure that I kind of started to feel, and it brings you down.”

The students used roughly seven rolls of packing tape over about a week of class time. They wrapped each other sticky-side up first, added another layer to seal it, cut the pieces off, and reassembled them into a full figure. Hammes said the hardest part was holding still while being taped. Wollak said it was easier to be the artist than the canvas.

Other sculptures in the class explored different themes. One featured a figure watching welding. Another included a backpack filled with old homework assignments. Some students filled their hollow figures with newspaper clippings or flowers.

Hammes and Wollak said they hope students walking past their piece recognize something familiar in it and know they aren’t the only ones who have felt that way.

The sculptures were on display in April and the first part of May. The sculpture class is new to Sartell High School, and both students recommended it to underclassmen looking for an elective next year.

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