{"id":542853,"date":"2026-07-10T14:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542853\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T14:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T14:45:09","slug":"wisconsin-artist-sculpts-his-family-history-story-out-of-cardboard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/542853\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin artist sculpts his family history, story out of cardboard"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Wisconsin native sculpture artist uses a medium that you might find in a recycling bin: corrugated cardboard.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Warren King<\/a> transforms cardboard into life-sized works that explore belonging and reconnect with his family\u2019s Chinese-American heritage. King was born in Madison, raised in Muskego and Brookfield, and currently lives in New York. <\/p>\n

He said he aims to change the medium as little as possible.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Understanding Wisconsin, Together.<\/p>\n

WPR\u2019s \u201cWisconsin Today\u201d newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has a grain to it,\u201d he told WPR\u2019s \u201cWisconsin Today<\/a>.\u201d The corrugations run a certain direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a very limited palette of shapes that I have access to. The planar geometric look of my sculptures comes from the limitations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This is a video of an in-progress cardboard sculpture by Warren King titled \u201cThe Distance We\u2019ve Travelled.\u201d Video courtesy of Warren King <\/p>\n

His work has been shown across the world, including in New York, Italy and Finland. A current display at the Lynden Sculpture Garden<\/a> in Milwaukee is titled \u201cWarren King: Homecoming.\u201d<\/p>\n

He joined \u201cWisconsin Today\u201d to talk about working with cardboard and the stories behind his sculptures.<\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kate Archer Kent: Talk about your process of taking a piece of cardboard and creating a beautiful piece of art.<\/p>\n

Warren King: I come from a very techie background. I had many years of engineering and then I was in software for a long time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now that I\u2019m doing art, I don\u2019t want any of that in my art. So when I start off a piece it\u2019s really with no technology at all. I don\u2019t even do many sketches.<\/p>\n

I look at some photos of people, I look at gestures and faces and expressions, and if something resonates with me, then that\u2019s really how I start.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AA visitor looks at a cardboard sculpture by Warren King at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison. Photo courtesy of Warren King<\/p>\n

KAK: One of the sculptures is of your grandmother. It\u2019s called \u201cThe Road Leads Home.\u201d How does this particular sculpture represent her?<\/p>\n

WK: That piece is very special to me. It\u2019s one piece in a series of pieces, there\u2019s 10 or 12 pieces in that series, that tell a story about growing up as a Chinese American in the Midwest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That piece tells a story of my grandmother taking the very first steps to leave China, which eventually led her to Wisconsin. It\u2019s like the beginning of our family\u2019s journey to America.<\/p>\n

The story behind it is one of my favorite stories and I didn\u2019t learn about this until I was in my 30s or 40s. It was during the war against the communists, the Chinese Civil War. My grandmother had just been married and in her early 20s. My grandfather was a pilot in the Air Force, and they had a young son.\u00a0My grandfather was stationed in another city, a few hundred miles away, so my grandmother lived with her mother and her sister. But she decided that she couldn\u2019t take the separation. She had to rejoin my grandfather.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"GrayA sculpture by Warren King called \u201cThe Road Leads Home.\u201d It is of his grandmother who traveled from China to the Midwest. Photo courtesy of Warren King<\/p>\n

She sold all of her belongings, she got some money from her mother and converted those into a few gold coins, which she sewed into the lining of her clothes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The journey to my grandfather was on foot, across a country that was war-torn and filled with bandits.\u00a0She strapped her child to her back and basically set off, and that was the last that she ever saw of her mother and her sister. She never went home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That was the beginning of many years of war that she described as the hardest period of her lifetime. Eventually, she and my grandfather survived the war, they made it to Taiwan. And from there, they came to America.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For me, living in Wisconsin, I see that moment as very pivotal. It\u2019s the moment where my grandmother made a decision that ultimately led to this life that I have here in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

View of Warren King\u2019s cardboard sculptures. Video courtesy of Warren King <\/p>\n

KAK: You have said that raising sons and being an artist are intertwined. Can you explain that?<\/p>\n

WK: This is an area that I decided to focus on for my next series. For the five or 10 years that I was discovering myself as an artist, it was the period that I was raising my young kids. So to me, art and parenting are so intertwined that they\u2019re really inseparable. Both have been transformational for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With my engineering and sciences background, I\u2019ve been programmed to think a certain way: very methodical, very detail-oriented.<\/p>\n

But when I was embarking on my artistic journey, I had this idea that artists need to be intuitive, inspired, prolific and improvisational. So I struggled with that a lot.\u00a0And having kids, I was very inspired by them because from the time that they could hold a glue gun, they were making things on their own. And watching them be completely unencumbered, uninhibited in their creations, it was just so inspiring to me and I emulated myself a lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Wisconsin native sculpture artist uses a medium that you might find in a recycling bin: corrugated cardboard.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-542853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}