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.

Update

Lots more glazing done. I also made a little box out of slabs. I'm experimenting with different amounts of glaze. Some pots have one coat, some have two, and I'm thinking I'll put four on a few since on the side of the glaze it said to apply 3 to 4 coats (or maybe it was 4 to 5, can't remember). So at some point firing will happen and finished pieces will emerge from the kiln! Still have that 7 project in the back of my head, I've been changing the idea around but haven't come to any new conclusions. Perhaps I could incorporate glass.

I've got my glass studio here at home up and running once again. It has been idle for quite some time due to sloth and the fact that it's an 'unheated' space. I've been thinking about slumping glass, and then realized that I could probably make clay forms at school, and then use them at home to create glass pieces. Woohoo! So I'll be making some odd looking things, perhaps.

Ceramics Art Block

Hillary asked if I would run the Ceramics Art Block and I decided I would do it. That means it's time to come up with a 'curriculum' for a bunch of little kids! I'm not exactly sure what age group it is, but I'm guessing it won't be 9-12! Perhaps I will create some sort of exercise for the kids to do at the very beginning, and then let them loose to make things. The idea is to get them to have a goal in mind. Getting distracted is VERY easy to do with clay. I've done it many times myself, and if they are younger students... I'll have to give it some more thought.

Back in the Ceramics Room...

I'd spent a few days thinking and wanted to get stuff done, so I went and trimmed a hanging plant pot that I had made a while ago, as well as a few of the cups that I let get too dry. I dipped them in water a bunch of times and then was able to scrape off some of the jagged edges on the bottom, but the plant pot (which I had kept in a plastic bag) was much easier to trim because it was still soft. The best part was, the water had drained from the lip, but the bottom was still soft.

People

I'm thinking perhaps I should incorporate people into this somehow... holding up the continent. One idea is that the people are all standing around the edge of the country and holding it up and some are falling into the shadow. I'll scan some sketches or sketch something on the computer since these concepts are hard to visualize textually.

The 7 Deadly Sins/Heavenly Virtues

An idea: Sloth vs Diligence. A cut out united states (clay, presumably) is suspended in front of a world map and a light is shining on it. 'Diligence' is written on the cut out country.

The concept is that the US is very diligent at getting things done, but it's removed itself and neglects the rest of the world (cast a shadow on it) which is the Sloth half...

Little text diagram: (top down)
___________ here is the map


____USA____ here is the united states


___Light___ here is the light which casts a shadow of the USA onto the map at the back

Going to need a clay United States, a light, and a map.

Not much time spent thinking this through, but I'm liking the idea so far. I'm going to need a lot more information and detail before I submit anything 'serious.'

More Glazing, etc.

Robert will be firing the kiln soon, so I hope to talk to him before that. Maybe I can even find a time to help him load it!

Images

Scratch scratch scratch....

I glazed one of the little cup things I made and scratched a pattern into the side of it. The design forms a band around the side of the cup. Scratching designs takes quite a while.... I also glazed one of the plant pots to be some shade of green (I forget which). Speckled green, perhaps.

Satisfactory Cylinder

It has straight sides!

Snow? Who cares..!

Who cares about snow, I can still make plant pots! I've made two so far, one is a rather generic looking pot, and the other is a shallow one with a ripply lip. I've been sketching up some ideas for other shallow, almost boxlike, plant pots. One concept is similar to a sushi platter where a flat rectangle is draped over a box form to make a cavity. I'll get some images up here soon, since it's hard to describe these things with words.

Pics

Chronological right to left...

Speedy Cylinders

I made three cylinders in an hour and fifteen minutes (including setup/cleanup). That's FAST compared to what I was doing before. I'm getting much better at centering. I have taken pictures of all three, I will post them once they have been uploaded to my computer. The first one used a lot of clay, but the next two I only used half as much. It was much easier working with a smaller amount of clay to make the same sized vessel.

I Thought I had the Camera...

Turns out I forgot to put it into my backpack but...

I made another cylinder today! This time it was very thick on the bottom and also thick on the top, however the base was much wider than the top. Practice practice practice...

Talked with Ann today, she suggested making a bunch of cylinders and creating a sculpture out of them while they are leather hard. (cutting and fitting etc.)

"Cylinder"

Well.... It's almost a cylinder. It looks more like a bulbous urn thing. My dad has the camera this week, but by the time next Monday rolls around there'll be new pic's of all the different cylinders I make this week.

Bowl "finished"

Progress report for bowl:



Next: cylanders

More Trimming...

Due to my poor job throwing the bowl, I needed to spend lots of time trimming it. Right now it's looking pretty good, so hopefully it will be in a 'complete' condition soon. While trimming the bottom I ruined the lip... so I had to fix that. All of this could be avoided by doing a better job throwing!

Trimming

Trimmed my bowl...partly. I had to leave class early today for skiing. Luckily the half hour (or less) is a good block of time to trim thrown objects. The base of the bowl was very chunky. As explained earlier, this is something that needs work. I should be able to finish trimming the bottom some other time, and then put in the divots in the lip for chopstick rests...

Throwing With One Hand

Yesterday (the 28th) I sketched out a bowl that I wanted to make on the wheel. The goal was to have it be fairly lightweight, although I'm not sure I achieved that. The sketch of the bowl featured small divots in the rim to act as chopstick rests.

The title here refers to the fact that I sprained my thumb skiing on friday. It's feeling a little better now though. Yesterday when I was making the bowl I was able to use my left hand, and the fingers of my right hand. I'm getting used to how clay works as I keep making things. I feel like I need to practice making tall things because many times the base of my piece is extremely heavy and the rim is very thin. If I could somehow move the thickness of the bottom upwards...

At this point I'm remembering how my friends would always start a piece. When centering they would flatten down the clay and then push it into a cylindrical tower. They would start to create the piece once they had their clay centered and in tower form. They did this presumably so that they wouldn't run into the same trouble that I am having.

As for how the bowl turned out... It was heavy on the bottom, thin on the top, and I havn't added the chopstick notches yet. They will be easy to add at any time. I will probably also thin the bottom when I trim it.

Starting Off

Welcome to my Ceramics Independent Study blog. During the first class period I went to use the ceramics room and found Robert teaching Earth Science. This is unfortunate, but nothing to worry about. I'll end up working on my own most of the time anyways. I reintroduced myself to the wheel and made a cup and then made a plate-dish thing that didn't work. It didn't work because I made the center opening too far down so that when I cut it off the wheel there was a hole in the bottom.

I talked to Robert for a little while after class and he agreed to turn up the heat for me at lunch so that it would be a comfortable temp for sixth period.

During the second period, I worked primarily on researching ceramics. I found one website that had information on making plaster from clay, sand, flour, and straw. Another website had information on making clay bricks. Apparently, for bricks, the clay is softened, then coated in sand, formed with a sanded mold, then dried and fired in a kiln. The firing is at low temp until the water is gone, then it is a high temp.

Things to do:
Acquire clay from a local place
Make a clay bowl on the wheel