Warren King’s Awe-Inspiring Cardboard Sculptures

Warren King’s transition to art is quite remarkable. Until five years ago, he worked in data mining and analysis for approximately 15 years. But while taking a break from software startups he discovered his artistic passion and began sculpting, using cardboard and glue. He hasn’t looked back since.

A self-taught sculptor through and through, King admits that the learning curve has been steep. “There’s a lot of trial and error,” he told Embodied Magazine. “But one of the benefits of using cardboard is it’s very quick [to] use, so it’s relatively easy to try things. If it doesn’t work out, I can just cut away whole sections and try something new. I’m still learning with each new piece, but now that I have some proficiency with making basic shapes, I’ve started to experiment with other techniques, like coloring with inks.”

Based in New York City, King’s latest series took him to his grandparents’ hometown in China. His series features life-sized cardboard sculptures of the villagers he had met there. A remarkable feat, and not just for a newbie. “The intimacy you get from making art, especially figurative art, is pretty intense,” he says.

“With every medium, but maybe especially so with cardboard, there’s a range of detail that can be used,” he explains. “More detail is not necessarily better, and accuracy is not what I go for.” Some of his techniques draw from Chinese traditions of cut-paper art. In this way, King mixes together the old and the new, injecting his personal experiences into his pieces.

Take a look at some of his paper sculptures in the gallery below: