Thanks to Dia Felix for making the extra effort, at the end of a long and tiring day, to come and shoot a guided tour of Sub-Terrain, then edit it into this wonderful mini-documentary. And also to Wayne Grim for scoring a soundtrack made entirely with cardboard!

My favorite part? Mountain, of course!

Surprisingly, the hardest part was not to take the cardboard out of the space, but figuring out what to do with it! After compacting it in “bales”, we had to find an enterprising cardboard scavenger and convince him to come pick up the amazing bounty we were offering.

And, as you’ll see in the timelapse and photos, we couldn’t help but keep Fluffy, the three-headed dog we’ve come to love and cherish.

Cardboard everywhere! The museum floor filled up with debris from the installation, which we had to package into manageable “bales”

Ryan and Roadkill try to figure out how to deal with all this…

Josh stomping on his own creation.

Roadkill helps compress one of the bales.

Bales, ready to go!

Trying to fit it all into the truck.

Fluffy now keeps watch over the Tinkering Studio from his perch on the roof.

CIT made us a thank you card! In cardboard, of course…

Thanks to the amazing Ron Hipschman, you can now zoom into the most lurid details of the Sub-Terrain world the folks at CIT build in the Tinkering Studio.

Do so at your own risk.

It’s with great pleasure that we share the finished installation by Artists in Residence CIT, and a bit of sadness that it will have to come down way too soon. The Tinkering Studio is completely transformed, as we hoped it would be, and Thursday we had our first opening, inviting the public to come through the space and see what they would do. Afterwards, we kept the space open after hours so that staff could also enjoy reveling in the dreamscape.

Here are some of my favorite bits and pieces from that evening.

A secluded black-lit cave with this gorgeous hot glue cobweb.

A lovely and cozy corner of Sub-Terrain.

Kids trying out the stocks.

Shadow puppets.

Another view of Fluffy, the three-headed Cerberus guarding the space.

It’s details like these that really make the space come alive and feel complete.

Swinging baby Chud toward the volcano.

As mentioned before, we (meaning Nicole, really) went a little overboard with the food decorations. Here’s a cardboard-colored tower.

A cheerios serpent presiding over a food-stuff cave.

We made our own cave of drab food.

Round pegs in square holes: the Cardboard Institute of Technology.

we found that a bunch of googly eyes and a bag of peanuts provides endless decorative potential

we always promote the proper tool usage when working with crackers and cookies

annie stayed late to help with the construction

the tiny cerberus was unbelievable.

Bonus points for everyone who tried this adorable but disgusting durian friut and special prize to Luigi for correctly identifying the smell/taste as a mix of banana that went bad, old over roasted garlic, and gasoline…yum.

The whole crew put on an amazing opening for the CIT and staff while in the process demonstrating that playing with our food is just another form of tinkering. Check out the whole slideshow and join us this week in the underground world of sub-terrain.

Eighteen (18!) days later:

(click to enlarge)

Today is the official opening of CIT‘s Sub-Terrain environment, which they have been building for the last two weeks in the Tinkering Studio. Finding themselves a little strapped for time right at the end, they asked — nay, begged — us to let them build overnight in order to finish their vision. As luck would have it, although there was an event happening in the museum, it was themed “Maker Faire”, and so the event coordinator was more than happy to let them work while visitors reveled and had a good time!

Sub-Terrain, sponsored or fueled by tequila? I’d bet on the latter…

Maker-itas being served!

Fluffy on its way to being completed with all three heads.

Come by and check out Sub-Terrain today, 3 p.m. – 5 p.m.!

the studio was totally crowded with amateur cardboard constructors

the faculty of the CIT working and thinking about the next steps

these two collaborated on a nice looking cottage

many of the little houses got incorporated into an ana serrano-esque mountain

another gnarly looking mountain sported a big nose ring

oh yeah and there was a unicorn showdown, NBD.

We all can’t wait to see how the installation shapes up in the last few days of construction. And I think that it will be amazing for visitors to come back to the cavern and point out a small piece of the underground world that they created.

The first in what will hopefully be a series of semi-serious tool reviews from the amazing folks at CIT. Here’s Josh Short gives us the skinny on one of his favorite tools for cutting cardboard: the Milwaukee Flip.