With a little help from her friends and a lot of recycled cardboard, singer-songwriter Hilary Grist has created an 8-foot-long, 5-foot-wide cardboard piano topped by a miniature cardboard city.

‘This is one craziest things I’ve ever done and my most ambitious arts and crafts project to date!” Hilary said about the project that should have spanned over two or three days, but eventually took over two months to complete. ‘It seemed like a fairly simple task in the beginning but let me tell you, once you start building a cardboard city – you just can’t stop!’ says Hilary, who built the recycled work of art in her 600 square foot studio apartment. ‘The piano city combines art and green awareness in a really fun way, I hope that it can be on display to show people what can be done with re-using in a creative way.’ the artist says about her recycled masterpiece.

But why would anyone spend that much time building a piano and a city model out of cardboard? Hilary and her team asked themselves the same question during the many hours of painstaking work, but the most simple answer is – for a music video. The singer is launching her new single “Tall Buildings” and the cardboard city on top of a life-size piano replica seemed like the perfect setting to shoot the music video. The coolest thing about this piece is that it’s made from recycled cardboard collected from Hilary’s building.

If you’re into cardboard architecture, you’re going to love Housing Estate N, an intricate cardboard city model made by a Japanese artist.

Thanks Hilary!