Art 220: Project 3 "The Cake"

The aim of this assignment was to build a tiered sculpture out of clay slabs.  The most obvious form this method lends itself to is a wedding cake, and this is what our instructor encouraged us to build.  That may be fun for some girls, but I was turned off by the cliché.  I went a different direction, creating another design speaking to Matthew and the objects his dedication to medicine has brought into our life.  Instead of a cake, the sculpture is simply a tiered stack of study paraphernalia:  a laptop, a textbook, bagels and a coffee cup and saucer.

The skills we learned included how to use a slab roller, the proper depth of the slab, and how to join the slab members by slipping and scoring and then blending a coil between the members.  The fun part for me was constructing the object.  I created a template for the sizes of each of the rectilinear surfaces and built the laptop and the book.  It seemed rather straight forward and logical process to me, a designer who regularly draws construction details... but many of my classmates struggled to put all the pieces together.  Glad to see my previous schooling is relevant to this field of study.

It is important that all the pieces have a hole to allow air to escape.  When air is trapped in clay it will explode when it is fired in the kiln.

The bagels were made by pushing a dowel through a thick coil, then rolling the clay around the dowel to smooth the surface.  Remove the dowel and gently bend the tube-like form into a sphere and join the ends.  The saucer and cup were made using basic pinch-pot methods.

I was a little disappointed in the glazing results, which is typical at this point.  The computer (which is quite an accurate rendering of the early laptop Matthew had when he was an undergrad) is a metallic black glaze.  I used the iron oxcide to add a luster to what would have been a flat black.  For the book I used the straight Gloria's Ace glaze.  I etched 'Emergency Medicine' on the spine of the book and the Gloria's Ace broke well, allowing the etching to become apparent.  The color which is between a maroon, tan, and brown fires in irregular pattern and it gave a weathered character to the book.  The pages of the book were a 'wash', not a glaze.  Washes are flat.  I applied 2-3 coats of the wash and I felt it fired too dark.  The bagels were an 'Old Gold' glaze.  The coffee cup came out too yellow I thought... the intended color was a pale cream, just off pure white.  Perhaps again I applied too many coats; the result being yellow instead of eggshell white.

What I like about this piece is that it completely blends into the typical clutter in our house.  It sits on our office desk and when I point it out to friends you can tell it was completely camouflaged.