COVID-19 handed this dad boxes. He’s transformed them into fun.
In a particularly low moment during the COVID19 pandemic — amid an uncertain career future and constantly shifting school shutdowns — Elliott Cramer sat on the back porch of his Beaver home and decided to make a top hat for his 4-year-old son out of a leftover cardboard box.
Looking back, the hat seemspretty rudimentary — unpainted and heavy on duct tape. But his son, Theodore, didn’t care, and Mr. Cramer photographed him performing his magic tricks with the hat in front of a packed house consisting of stuffed animals.
And, like magic, the hat transformed into something else entirely. “I had so many cardboard boxes,” said Mr. Cramer, 37. “We just started making stuff.”
The result is a project that has brought joy, purpose and magic to Mr. Cramer’s family in a time when so many other things haven’t gone according to plan. He hopes it might do the same for others.
Mr. Cramer, who grew up in Zelienople and studied photography at Kent State University, has built a career as a commercial photographer. This year was shaping up to be his busiest yet — until COVID-19 hit. Photo shoots became logistically impossible. Companies scaled back their marketing budgets. “All the work I had lined up disappeared,” he said. “It all just disappeared.”
As the spring continued on, he started to grow worried and angry, concerned about his professional future.
Cardboard wouldn’t solve all their problems, but it could give the family some structured activities.
With his children’s
schools scrambling with their sudden switch to online learning, the cardboard creations became not just a side hobby but part of Theodore’s and his 6-year-old sister Vivian’s education.
Theodore asked to be an astronaut, so they didn’t just make a rocket ship out of a deep freezer box — they learned about space. Mr. Cramer’s wife, Stephanie, a high school Spanish teacher, already had started an activitywhere they picked a different musical artist out of a jar every week and listened as a family. That music education got beefed up with cardboard guitars — a green acoustic one for Theodore and a pink electric guitar for Vivian, with volume knobs made out of water bottle tops.
To design the knight and armor cardboard boxes, they visited online exhibits at the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also watched “Shrek.” His children, especially art-minded Vivian, participated in the painting and design once the cardboard was cut. Sitting on Dad’s lap in his basement office piled with books and cardboard projects, Vivian described picking colors for her crown and its jewels for a project he dubbed “Quaranqueen.” She was also responsible for putting together a costume from her mother’s old clothes.
Mr. Cramer also threw himself into taking the photos to document the projects as a way to use the creative muscles he normally exercised through work. “The idea was also to make something for me to do,” he said. “I was very much starting to lose myself.”
He staged photos of the kids — flying an airplane at the Ohio River, interviewing a doll with a cardboard microphone, racing in cardboard cars. Sometimes the kids helped, too. Because
they don’t have a stuffed animal dragon, Mr. Cramer wasn’t sure who Theodore’s adversary should be in his knight costume. Then his son began sword fighting blood red leaves as they fell off a tree across the street.
Mr. Cramer had been
sharing the photographs on a Facebook page for other photographers and began to hear that the images were inspiring other dads to do creative projects with their families. His wife encouraged him to post cardboard templates for his designs so that other
people could make box creations, too.
He has added a section to his Instagram and his professional website depicting the quarantine project — with polished photographs, behind-the-scenes shots and detailed instructions for other parents who might also have spare cardboard, time and imagination. “My hope is that it inspires other families to spend time together,” he said.
As he has continued to create, the projects have grown more involved. The guitar, for example, took three or four days. “You gotta let paint dry,” he said. There is also the challenge of keeping the kids from playing with their new cardboard toys so aggressively that they destroy them before they can be photographed.
They have completed 13 projects and in late December were working on a 14th — a cardboard reindeer and sleigh for the family Christmas card.
The projects have provided purpose and structure for the family as many of their other plans and activities felt out of their control. And with his children’s social lives restricted by COVID-19, the projects have helped them grow closer, playing more imaginatively and more with each other.
“This is not me saying I like COVID — I hate COVID — but I feel blessed this happened to me with kids at this age,” he said. “Memories are what we really care about at the end.”