Newly fired pieces!!!

These two photos are the bowls that I have been working on and it feels to me that the lines give this set unity because of their simitarities. These bowls are glazed with Gold Luster Shino at ^10. I am very happy with this piece bacause of the glaze quality and the unity that brings the piece together.

This is the largest platter that I have made so far and it turned out great! I am very happy with the glaze quality, green celedon and Tenmoku. This piece is one of my best platters yet due to its size and glaze quality.

This platter is glazed with penn state shino with black stain. I love the glaze on this piece. It turned out great. This is just how I wanted it to look like. I love the line in this piece because it adds emphasis to the platter.

Moving onto Bigger, Better and Taller Forms

During the span of the last two or so weeks I have been working toward making larger and taller forms. This means learning how to throw large cylinders. My reasoning for wanting to work on cylinders is because I am enrolled in Bob Smith's Class at the Westminster Recenter for eight weeks during the summer. This means that I must be able to create tall forms on the wheel in order to raku and saggar fire, just as Bob Smith does at his studio in Evergreen, Colorado.

During this class I will be challenged to create beautiful, magnificent forms with the help of the famous potter Bob Smith who earlier in the year helped me with raku for my personal project. I'm very excited to be practicing on throwing cylinders because it will help be able to make many more things in hope to develop my style in art.

When making taller bottle forms, a huge inspiration to me is Karen Swyler. These bottles have such a perfect form that suits my style. I love the simplicity in the pieces that she creates and I think that her pottery has great movement and works together to create a whole.

I am also very inspired by Elaine Coleman because her bottle forms are very simple and I love how tall her bottle forms are. I like the balance of the form as well because the balance makes the peice look like it has great craftsmanship. The perfection in her forms is very appealing to my interests.

I don't like the glaze or surface texture of this piece because it seems too busy.

The type of glazing that we will be trying this summer will be saggar firing and raku firing with Bob smith, which also leads me to another one of my inspirations while making bottle forms.

The pictures below are some examples of some of Bob Smith's work.

This is a Saggar fired bottle with Terra Sigallata. (left)

This is bottle that is raku fired with ferric chloride. (right)

Platters Update!

I have finished a platter! The platter is dipped in penn state shino and then the design was painted on with iced white celedon. I love this 'platter' because of the movement of the piece. I am very happy with the outcome, especially with the glaze and the overall form of the piece.

This platter got an 'honorable mention' award in the most recent show that these pieces got sent to.

I also have many pictures of platters that are ready to be glazed and will be fired in the gas kiln within the next week or so...

Longest Sculpture Project Ever! The Boat.

Reverie- [rev-uh-ree] noun. a daydream

I have been working on the completion of my giant sculpture piece since the beginning of December 2008. It is finally coming to a closure.

This project came about when we were looking through an art book, looking at Lisa Claugue's art especially. We were looking at the animals that she makes by dipping stuffed animals in slip and then firing them in the kiln, at high temperatures making the animals burn away leaving the form of the animal in clay.

I then created mask that fits onto the animal's face in order to portray that he wanted a different characteristic. I sculpted a fish maskThis is the mask. In this picture, the mask isn't completely finished because the glaze wasn't completely finished in its process.

This is the animal that was dipped in Tashi porcelain slip. It was glazed with white majolica and fired at ^06.

Then I went on to create an environment for the animal. This had to somehow connect to the mask. Knowing that the mask happened to be a fish, I decided to make a boat. My main decision to create a boat was based off of a picture that I took while on a trip in Seattle, Washington.

This picture was taken in Olympia, Washington, off of the Puget sound. This picture helped in my creation of the boat because it gave me some type of visual to look off of.

I created my boat with the use of slabs. I cut out a pattern that I then used to get two slabs the same size that connected together. I then used those patterns to hold my boat, while it dried.

The surface technique was one of the hardest parts in completing my project. First, I applied black wash and dry brushed it gray, and then put a crackle solution on the boat. This was a failure. So, I went back to the drawing board and then tried applying milk paint to the boat and then applying the crackle solution, but once again that didn't work correctly. After I did this I decided to leave it the way that it was because i thought that it looked good. But come to figure out that the glaze started to peel off of the surface of the boat. I then tried applying wax to the piece, using a heat gun to melt all the excess wax. This left the texture of the piece feeling really smooth and looking really shiny. In order to create the vision that I wanted I took a rusting solution that made the boat look older. After many steps of trial and error I found the surface technique/ glaze that worked best with what I was trying to portray. On the left is a picture of the first time I applied glaze to the boat (black wash, Gray acrylic paint, crackle solution).

In the picture below you can see how the glaze began to peel off of the surface.

In order to make this look more like a boat I added many other medias, in order to make the boat look more appealing to the eye. The sail of the boat is made out of the pages from a book ("The Rainbow Fish") I also used shells, sand dollars, books, wood, fabric, spray paint, rope, bamboo, and metal. When all of these medias came together, it felt to me like it became one and create a piece that was worth the long while it took to complete this piece.

I decided to name this piece reverie because it means daydream. I felt like by creating this piece, I was trying to focus it more on children because I wanted to portray the theme that 'you can be whoever you want to be if you put your mind to it'. I also felt like books gave you this imaginary feeling like you are inside the book that you are reading and that you could be anyone you wanted to be by using your imagination. So, basically my reasoning for naming this piece reverie would be that you would get lost in your own little world when looking into this piece and imagining the story behind it for yourself.