Brand New

I wanted to let everybody (2 people) know that I started my own blog. I posted some brand new images of my Sculpture I final project! Find it here.

Philly Shows

Here are two sites of ceramic shows I went to see in Philadelphia last week. I hope the images stay up even after the shows go down....... Great stuff.

http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/dirt.php
http://www.theclaystudio.org/gallery/?gallery=drutt

oh. and here is a site that has examples of really great ceramic and sculptural work. The gallery is in California, so the website picts will just have to do......

http://www.franklloyd.com/dynamic/artist_list.asp

Coil Building 101

I don't think anyone uses this anymore. And you were so excited about it last year... Nevertheless, I promised I'd post something when I had new things. So, here are some things that I've done this semester: some finished, some in progress.

About KSU ceramics... Ceramics 1 is entirely hand building, and the only method of glaze firing that we're supposed to do is raku. Unless you make things that can't withstand the quick heat shock or that are too big to fit inside the kiln... opps. We mix our own red earthenware clay in ancient soldner mixers that are always broken, and load our own bisques. Surface decoration is encouraged with studio slips, not surprising considering the two lead professors' works. The studio is old school... kick wheels (with motors fortunately) and slow firing gas kilns. Students are taught to throw starting in Ceramics 2, though I already have a pretty good foundation is that area.

Entirely coil built... unfortunately this cracked pretty severly along a connection, but is still in tact. Textured using a ribbon tool and smoothed out the edges with my favorite blue rubber rib (not a mud tool rib - too firm) when the clay was a firm leatherhard. Black lustre glaze was added into the texture and wiped away from the surface and clear glaze was applied over top. Lightly reduced.

I obviously enjoy making dishes with large exteriors. (It started with my flower frogs last year I think.) Coil built center dish... slab built sides and top. Layered slip decoration... it's tough to see in this picture. Green slip over white slip scraped away with a loop tool. Eva taught me a great way to fix cracks with this piece that was taught to her by Jun Kaneko. (no joke... Jun was her professor at one time) The crack was filled, and no cracks were present when it was unloaded from the bisque. (And I was super happy about that)


This is a very large parsnip that I modeled after a regular size parsnip (as seen on the table) for our natural object project. Texture stretches the entire length of the piece (this picture was taken in progress), and surprisingly this didn't shrink an obsurd amount through the first firing. Unfortunately a large section cracked and fell off from the opposite side, but it should be an easy fix. This is about 28 inches tall... a good 6 inches bigger than the max height for the raku kiln. It may or may not get wood fired within the next 2 weeks. (depending on available space in the kiln) Entirely coil built and hell to make. I'm so messy when it comes to carving. (And yes, that is the tiny, tiny banding wheel I use while building all of my projects.)

That's all for now!!!!!!!!!!!! Love from Kent, Ohio.

Ok, now my stuff...

Not everyone has seen my work from this summer, so here are some of the highlights. My focus was tactile functionality. I wanted to create some pieces that created interesting tactile experiences, but remained completely functional. Here are some of the pieces.

New Work

Finally have something to post up here!  I have three ceramic pieces in an art exchange show between three colleges in the Harrisonburg, VA area.  The show is called "Three" and is between Bridgewater College, Eastern Mennonite University, and my school, James Madison University.  There are a few students with work in the show from each of the three schools.    

One is a non-functional (dysfunctional?) combination between a cup and a teapot, titled "Both Ends Up." The other thrown piece is combinations of wheel-thrown vase forms attached end-to-end and glazed together in groups of three.  The wall-hanging is based upon an idea I had in a sculpture class, thinking of the idea of how things define a landscape, the way humans mark nature...and thus we have the tree that branches into telephone poles.  Let me know what you think!  

Christine

teapot incident...

so i put my teapot in a show at second friday in lititz. i knew i shouldn't have put it out, but i was a little too vain and put it out in spite of my gut feeling that something terrible was going to happen to it. Sure enough, the wind blew my friend's painting over onto it and the handle shattered off. I guess it's not that big of a deal but I would really like to try and glue it back together, but i can't find anything that works. I tried an all purpose crazy glue and it got some of the handle together, but it won't attach to the body of the teapot. Any suggestions? oh and the lid is fine though i just didn't put it on.

Summer is coming....

So summer is coming, (or is already here for a few of you). I think one of the ways to make this blog work is to make and share new things. We see what each other makes in class, so it isn't that big of a deal to have it online. We'll need some projects to do over the summer so we can share individual solutions to some common themes. I don't want to be the one that initiates the projects.... I do that all year long. I'd like to hear from you. Any ideas?