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Woman creates art from old cardboard material

By Barry Wong
Updated  June 12, 2025 5:18pm EDT
Sarasota
FOX 13 News
Cardboard artist builds custom creations

Cardboard artist builds custom creations

A long-time furniture maker is building custom art out of cardboard.

The Brief

    • A Sarasota woman creates art from old carboard.
    • Patricia Petit said "piles of stuff" inspires her.
    • Since 2013, Pettit has had around 30 pieces featured at Art Center Sarasota's Juried Art Shows.

SARASOTA, Fla. - When artist Patricia Pettit sees a pile of old cardboard, she doesn't see trash. She sees possibilities. 

"It's the shapes and the textures of things that interest me the most," Pettit said. "A pile of stuff on the table that inspires me."

The backstory:

Pettit spends post-retirement life transforming the everyday material into art. She's been particularly drawn to cardboard packing materials used to keep shipped items safe inside of a box. 

"I'd always been fascinated with corrugated cardboard," Pettit said. "You have all kinds of possibilities for things you can."

Pettit has weaved, rolled and flattened cardboard to transform it into components for art pieces. Many times, those pieces will form some kind of repeating pattern. Her first piece using recycled cardboard featured six different types of packing materials. One of her favorite pieces is a Medusa. 

What they're saying:

"The single-sided corrugating cardboard. I've done a lot of different things with that," Pettit explained. "I coiled it up across the corrugations and glued it, painted it. That's how I made the tentacles on the Medusa. The snakes are made with that technique."

Pettit designed custom furniture before retirement. She says the need to fit pieces together properly carries over to her art. She initially created art from wood scraps and found objects prior to giving cardboard a try. 

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"That's definitely from my background as a furniture maker and more of a builder. Like the Medusa piece, the engineering on that was a lot of fun, figuring out how to attach the tentacles, hold their shape and so forth," Pettit said. "I enjoy the part of manipulating the cardboard, getting it to do what I want, getting it stay put where I want. That's the most fun part."

Pettit was first inspired to submit art to a public show by her neighbor, a fellow artist. 

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Since 2013, Pettit has had around 30 pieces featured at Art Center Sarasota's Juried Art Shows. 

The Source: Information for this story was gathered by FOX 13 photojournalist Barry Wong.

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