Nearing the end...

Today is Wednesday of the last week of school...

All that is left to do is glaze and hope that maybe there are enough things to fire again this year.

Whooaaaa

This post is long overdue! The art opening went well, apparently my sister did the sin of sloth... (mine was the virtue of sloth).

Art block has been going extremely well! Robert has been immensely helpful in that he doesn't take control of the art block but instead helps get things going, and then leaves. He then comes back to talk with me at the end to see how it went and give me tips etc. I've learned a lot about discipline and I'm glad to be learning it from Robert because from my perspective he has a very simple and efficient way of dealing with 'bad situations' that occur. I'm excited to be able to write reports for each of the students as well. It's something I've never done for my other art blocks... perhaps I should have, but in this art block I really feel like the teacher.

In class time (indy art time), I've also gotten a lot done. More pots came out of the kiln the other day and they seem to be sort of crackly glazed. It had something to do with the way they were fired because some pots had the exact same glaze combination as before (I decided to do more with that same blue color that was so popular at the art opening) yet the look was very different. It reminds me of those pots that have the white cracked glaze where the cracks have dark stuff in them (made by cooling them in woodchips or sawdust I believe) but on a much finer scale. The cracks are there but they are much smaller and there is no black stuff (less noticeable).

Sounds like there is an art class gathering tomorrow at lunch which should be fun! (there is food =D)

Update

I have my list of things to do, but not many of them have gotten done. I've been sketching things, however, and have been practicing making glass people. I've decided to make very thin glass people for the hunger scene, and I have a plan for the tsunami but I'm not sure if it will work. It involves stained glass (soldering, etc.). The machine is also under construction. It's going to have some sort of hopper or holding tank for fuel, and some sort of motor or drive device. Glass tubes, metal, and gears could make this be a pretty cool little sculpture. I'm still contemplating bases... I'm thinking that perhaps clay for all but the tsunami and the arguers. The arguers would be "too civilized" for earthy materials and the tsunami is in the ocean.

For ceramics class I also want to create some stuff using wooden frames, but I'll have to make those at home. the idea is to cut out a slab of clay and have a wooden form with an indent in the middle to create a plate. It would be like creating a piece of wood to fit the bottom of the plate, and then smooshing clay into it to make the plate. Maybe I'll get to that after I have the art piece done for the opening on the 16th or if I have some spare time.

Clock

I've decided to make the clock ceramic, so I made it today. It's a ceramic circle... woohoo. I may be able to figure out some way to mount an actual clock on the back and create glass hands, but we'll see how it goes...

The Idea is Coming to Life

The idea with the four scenes is coming to life. I've got one clay base made, and I might make this one a glass base, not too sure. It looks kind of like a turtle shell at the moment. I have also generated a list of things that need to get done for this project:

Make the three people involved (maybe more depending on what I decide for the hunger scene)
Make a clock for the one scene with the two arguing guys
Make some sort of machine that powers the clock etc.
Make a tsunami!
Make "Hunger"
Make a base for it (probably a plywood cutout)
Make scene bases (wooden circles that the other things will fit onto).

The new idea is to have these four scenes supported on poles (wooden dowels) and each one will be a little different. The arguing scene will have two people with clock arm hands pointing at the two disaster scenes arguing about what fuel to use to keep the clock turning. The other scene will be really simple (as is the idea) involving one person walking along happily etc. The two other disaster scenes will be a tsunami and hunger. The cool part about this setup is that the towers can be different heights. Though I'm not too sure how I want to implement this yet.

In essence, the bases will just hold up these four scenes on wooden dowels which can be set to any height initially since they are just poles.

Today (Tuesday) is the first day of Ceramics Art Block, which should be fun. I wrote down some notes to help me make sure I say everything important to those kids (like making sure they clean up!!!).

Non-Ceramic

Here at home I tested out glass fusing with my kiln once again. It worked surprisingly well! I have a four layer kiln, bottom layer, bead door layer, heating element layer, and lid. I removed the bead door since having that hole in the kiln really reduces the heat, and I was able to really get the glass hot! Unfortunately I broke my ceramic form, so now I really have to make a new one!!

New Idea

So here's a brand new idea for the sin/virtue project. It contains four different scenes.

Scene 1: Two people each have a machine to make their clock move faster. One powers the machine with ethanol, one with gasoline, both the clocks move very fast.

Scene 2: One person walking somewhere, their clock is broken.

Scene 3: Hungry people.

Scene 4: Natural disaster.

The idea is that the two people in scene one are pointing out the errors that the other person is causing (ethanol - hunger, gasoline - global warming..natural disaster). The person in scene two is fine. Scenes three and four are just illustrating for scene two.