Art 220: Project 4 "Mythical Creature"

The final project of the semester was quite a unique one.  We were to create a mythical creature, combining three different types of animals:  one that travels by land, air, and sea.  We chose the animals randomly, drew them from a hat.  The creatures I drew were a crane, a whale, and a meerkat.

 

Quite the odd combination.  Quite the odd assignment I thought... especially for someone who doesn't really have the gene that allows me to see animals as 'cute'.  Typically.  And so it really surprised me how quickly I took to this assignment, and how much I found myself enjoying the creation of animal figures.

I loved the graceful neck and face of the crane (actually, I studied egrets, as they are very similar to cranes and are native to Louisiana).  I decided to make the neck and face of the crane a central part of the design of the creature.  The most distinctive feature of the meerkat is the way they stand on their back legs, letting their forearms hang.  When they stand like that they have a very human quality.  This upright stance and short arms is the characteristic I chose to bring forward to the mythical creature.  The tail of the whale is a signature feature and quite recognizable and it turned out to be a graceful conclusion to the piece.

The construction of the piece was quite intuitive and I used a combination of all the building methods I learned throughout the semester.  Beginning with the body I constructed a large slab.  I created the basic arched form of the body out of a mass of newspaper twisted together.  I draped and wrapped the slab around the newspaper form.  The paper burns in the firing of the piece, leaving the clay form after it is strong enough to support itself.  I used similar method for the arms, creating small newspaper forms and then coil-building clay around those forms.

I successfully built the neck of the 'Cralekat' out of coils.  I was well aware that I could run into the same problem I did with the trophy, having the clay dry too quickly, and having too much weight (in the head) being supported by a narrow stem of clay.  I learned so much in this process: the limits of the clay and what can be accomplished at each state of dryness.  The tail was made from slabs, trimmed and shaped using newspaper.  I added texture to the back, mimicking that of feathers.  Detail was etched in the features of the beak and face.  The creature came to life relatively quickly (maybe just 4 class periods were spent constructing it).

The time came to bisque fire the piece and then begin glazing.  I had given no thought to the colors I wanted to use and the effects I wanted to create.  But it didn't matter.  During the kiln firing a classmate's piece exploded next to mine and the cralekat became a causality.   Broken at the neck, the beak, and the tail.  So, no additional glazes or kiln firings would be possible.  I used 'JB Weld' clear epoxy to glue the pieces back together.  At least I wanted to have some record of the form created.  I think it might be a nice lawn ornament, a sculpture to guard over the veggie garden.

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.

 

Art 220: Project 2 "The Trophy"

You are to create a trophy to symbolize a personal achievement or something you are proud of; to honor a person, animal, ect. who has greatly affected your life.

What I learned:

• This project focused on coil building, starting with a slab base, introducing slipping and scoring method to join surfaces.
• Developed understanding of clay's properties and working in the round.

Obviously, this piece is for Matthew.  It seemed appropriate, as so much of our life together up to this point has revolved around his worthy profession.

The sketches are simple: a chalice like form, with the handles being depicted as the arms of a stethoscope.   I chose to go with the form that stands tall and slender with a wide, shallow bowl.

This is essentially a piece that I think I could have achieved on the wheel.  One would throw this in two pieces, the pedestal and then the bowl and slip and score to join.  I have not yet thrown a two part piece, but I have seen it done and seems rather straight forward.  However, using a wheel for this assignment would have been cheating, since this course focuses on handbuilding techniques.  And so I began the rather difficult task of trying to create symmetry with my hands.

I began with a round slab that would serve as the floor of the piece and began building the form with a series of coils.  One blends the successive coils together to create the desired form.  The tricky part with this form was beginning with a wide base and then bringing the clay together to create a narrow pedestal.  I was (I now realize) overly concerned with the smoothness of the surface and the uniformity of the form.  I spent too much time editing my piece, chiseling away to achieve an even surface.  Between classes my piece dried too quickly and all my whittling made it dangerously thin.  I think I was stalling, unsure of how to attach the upper section.

Eventually I attached the top bowl piece, which I had made separately, by slipping and scoring.  This was the moment of truth, testing whether the fragile, dry stem would support the weight of the bowl.  Everything seemed balanced and strong, but as I was placing it on an upper shelf to dry the top half comically (and cruelly) fell back on my head before it smashed, flattened, on the floor. (!)

It was all too much to deal with that evening alone in the studio.  Exhausted and defeated, I tried to do a quick mending job before leaving for the night... but when I returned to class the next day the top half had fallen over again.  My professor, Renee, who had been discouraging all the whittling, quickly went to work reattaching the fragile stem.  I'm convinced she used a special slip.

By the end of the class it was still standing, and she had given me specific instructions to "stop messing with it".  This tortured me because the bowl piece she reattached had not been reformed well after the fall, and the surface was terribly uneven.  As well as the stem she reattached!  It was not square at all, which is enough to drive any architect crazy!  (The stem appears square in these photos, but a view from the side would reveal how the piece leans forward).

The next class I completed the remaining decoration, pulling long, narrow handles for the arms of the stethoscope, and forming the listening piece and attaching all of that to the main form.  I took a photo of it before it was fired because there was a good chance it wouldn't make it through the initial bisque fire.  But it did!  I glazed the trophy using a copper oxide wash and an advacado 'Gloria's Ace' glaze.  I was trying to go for a classic, weathered, aged look.  I was very happy with the way the glaze fired and the overall look of the final design (despite imperfections apparent only to the artist).  It sits on our mantle.

A few worthy points to mention:

• Though I said I could have thrown the main body of this piece the final result would not have been the same.  For have not had luck building a piece so tall on the wheel.  Perhaps it could have been achieved in miniature, but this sculpture stands 13" tall, and 9" or 10" is the maximum height I can achieve at the wheel.   
• When Renee was instructing us on how to build our piece, she said "Your hands will do what your mind sees".  It is such a wonder!  That very much is my experience with the process of sculpting.  It was very interesting how closely my peers initial sketches' resembled their final work.
  

ART 220: Project 1 (b)

The second series of pinch pots were based on the concept of a daffodil. These pieces are thinner, smaller, and perhaps more cohesive as a set when stacked. 

Though perhaps the forms are more obvious and less interesting. At least in concept.

ART 220: Project 1 (a)

The assignment was to create a series of 5 pinch pots that fit inside each other. On some of the pieces texture was required. Each piece had a perscribed surface treatment, meant to introduce us to different techniques in glazes, slips, oxcides, sigulatas, ect.

I built two series of pinch pots. Mainly because I learned so much about the clay and this hand building technique and I wanted to see the extents to which I could manipulate the clay.

My first concept was leaves (big surprise, I know). Each leaf related to a different place I have lived, a plant that spoke to a certain place.

From smallest to largest:

• 1 Birch :: Atlanta (the tree outside our apartment window)
• 2 Dogwood :: Jennings (the first tree I remember dad teaching me in the back yard in town)
• 3 Dogwood :: Baton Rouge (a plant that had such seasonal change I had difficulty identifying it on plant quizes)
• 4 Sourwood :: Montreat (a plant I loved to identify to hikers on public hikes, then I would make them chew on it to reveal its characteristic sour taste)
• 5 Redbud :: The Tietje Farm (there was one growing by the old canal at the farm, I would watch it bloom every spring from my bedroom window)
• 6 Gingko :: Columbia, SC (the first plant that stood out to me on my visit to the state capital building where there are several large specimens)