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.'