Finals Week

Well, I picked a great time to get Bronchitis.  I have been sick for 9 days now.  I finished my brain lamp.  I got three different shades for it, but was unhappy with all three.  This is the best one, even though it still looks a little funny.  It was white, but I attached the gray fabric and painted the edges black.  It is silly.  I got together all my ceramics from the semester.  I am pretty happy with the spread.  I cleaned up all the bottoms with my Dremmel, which worked quite nicely.  I had much better results with it than the grinders at school.

 Since I was too sick to work in the studio as much as I would have liked I did quite a bit at home this past week.  Here is a box I made for our group portfolio in printmaking.  I love the way it turned out.  The colors are great and I am pleased with the paint job and rhinestones.  I might cut off the top and hang it on my wall.  It has a nice satin-lined, coffin-like inside for the prints to rest.

 I finished off my Budd-ah monotype/screenprint.  The colors look great.  Sorry the orientation is incorrect.  The black outline screen is not quite as crisp as I had liked, but I am still happy with it.

 I have also been busy printing babies.  Here is one of them with a chine-colle.  She is so cute. :)

Tuesday and Thursday we did Raku firings.  Here are the pieces I got out.  It's always a good time and I'm happy with some of the pieces.  I wish there was some way to control it a little better so the pieces aren't so fragile.  My pieces from the Raku always have cracks and feel so weak, but other Raku pieces I have bought are not fragile.  It might be a different clay body.  Or better technique.  I hope we can learn more this summer.

Here are some pieces I got out of the gas kiln, including lidded vessels, two organ sculptures, combination vessels, and my pitcher and basin.  Aside from some things being stuck to patties, all is well.

I also cleaned up my studio for the open house.  It was nice.  I wish I wasn't sick, though. 
I have a lot of mugs in the gas kiln now, and a bowl, I believe.  I can't wait to see how they turn out.  I hope I do not have any more golden chisel awards. 

 My BFA critique was Monday.  I think it went really well.  I got some really good advice to think about, but also some suggestions I am not too keen on.  I was nervous for no reason, really.  It actually felt pretty good.  I was not nervous at all when speaking.  It was all in the anticipation.  I was so happy when it was over.  Nobody had any harsh comments, which was a relief. 

I did a lot of glazing this week.  I glazed four lidded vessels, my pitcher and basin, two combination vessels, my heart sculpture, brain lamp, and screened self-portrait.  I love glazing.  I love the element of surprise involved.  It is such a bummer that the motor on the gas kiln went out.  I had two pieces in there.  I hope we have enough time to get everything fired now.  I left a lot of space showing on my lidded vessels I glazed.  I'm hoping the brown stoneware color looks nice with the glaze colors I selected.  I am super excited to see the way my stacked orb sculpture turns out.  I think it's going to be cool.  I am worried about it running though.  Everything I have used Jeff Long Beach blue on has run, but I really like the way it looks.  And I love mixing colors.

I helped Pako paint his walls in the gallery tonight.  I am so tired I can't think straight.  I have to work in the morning.

Mother F*$%er, I'm Ill

On Monday I loaded the gas kiln and an electric kiln.  I fixed up my basin and pitcher with bisque-fix.  I'm hoping it won't un-fix in the gas kiln.  I would consider trying out some cone 6 glazes on it, but I feel bad bumming them off people since we don't have any class cone 6.  On Wednesday I threw a lot, but alas, I was not one with clay.  I prefer to blame the clay, though.  It was way too wet.  It went better once I attained some stiffer clay.  I managed to throw four decent pieces for my last combination vessel, three of which I actually used.  It seems that my vessel is lopsided, which is really bothering me.  I think I would like the form if not for that.  I did not notice any of the individual pieces of it being off, but I guess they were.  I want to make a new one in the same shape so I will be happy with it.  I hate turning in pieces I'm not happy with.  I tested some methods of putting imagery on clay with it.  Today I made two screens for printing on clay.  I need to tweak the method I used for printing on the round, wet vessel.  I think if my screen and image were smaller, and my glaze was thicker it would work nicely.  I think I like the leaves I did on the porcelain cups.  Today I also loaded another bisque kiln so a few more of my pieces would be fired for my BFA crit on Monday.  I got a few more bowls out of the gas kiln today.  I'm pretty happy with them.  I really like all my bowls.  One of them stuck to the patty.  I need to grind it, which I'm not too excited about.  I hate the way the grinder makes the glaze look.  I have been reading a lot more about ways to put imagery on clay.  I am very interested in one process I found in which you make your own decals.  I need to procure some cone 6 glaze for that.  You can fire a piece to cone 6, then apply your decal and fire it to cone 04.  It seems that the decals will not stick to cone 10 glazes.  There was a lot of technical aspects to this that I need to ask Brian about.  I am going to do that this summer.  I also want to play around with some underglaze pencils, perhaps.  This guy at work did some awesome drawings on glass with underglaze pencils.

Today we had "The Illest show the Spacelab has ever seen."  That was fun.  Here are some photos from that show.  Unfortunately the camera seems to have deleted the pictures of my prints and David Jones', which I am a big fan of.  I guess I will try to hit up the Spacelab photo album for those.

The best ceramic week ever

I got a lot done in ceramics this week.  I am working on the following two sculptures.  They are a slight departure from the themes I have been working with, but I am enjoying it.  I am interested in mold making.  When I made my first mold of the light bulbs I thought it would be really cool to put a bunch of them together and manipulate the shapes in some way.  I warped some of them a little, but was a little intimidated by the fragile porcelain.  When I was in Charlotte over winter break I saw an awesome contemporary ceramic show.  One of my favorite pieces was a sculpture made of numerous molds of a horse figures put together.  I was very intrigued by the possibilities I saw.  So, these two are drawing some inspiration from that.  Also, I love the brain and heart organ shapes, however trite they may be.  I love psychology, hence the brain.  The heart sculpture is going to be called some sort of ode to my father and my father's father.  Both of these men experienced heart problems all their life, and had open heart surgery at young ages.  My grandfather recently died of heart problems and my father was very recently told his heart is enlarging and is at high risk of dying from an anurism.  Some of the hearts are warped and misshapen a bit.  The veins and valves kind of lead to one another symbolize this connection, but do not quite connect to show the hardship my father has experienced from the death of his father and the bad news.  

I think I might turn the brains into a lamp.  That might be cool... a brain lamp.  To be honest, I am not too sure how I feel about these pieces.  Part of me is like, that's pretty cool, but another part is like, what the hell is that?  We'll see.  I needed to see what would happen in this departure.   

I bisque fired my pitcher and basin, which have cracks in the bottoms.  That was pretty upsetting, but you ceramic, you learn, I suppose.  I filled in the cracks with bisque-fix, so I am hoping they do not get bigger in the gas firing.  It's not the end of the world if they do though.  This piece is not meant for function.  It is purely aesthetic.  But, damn, it sucks!  I am really happy with the forms, and the cracks reflect negatively on my work.

I printed this slab this week.  I am really happy with it.  I wasn't sure if it was going to work because I printed straight on the wet slab, five different colors.  Each color was run 2  or 3 times.  So, it has about 12 or 13 layers of underglaze on it.  I was scared since the slab is wet that the glaze would transfer off on the following screens, but it worked quite nicely.  Next I should try on a porcelain slab so the background clay color will be white once fired instead of that pink color.

The following two pictures are two of my assembled thrown-pieces sculpture thingys.  I am really happy with the second one.  It is just as I wanted.  I am still not too sure how I feel about the first.  After this picture was taken I did a lot of smoothing and fine-tuning on it, which made me happier with it.  To be honest, the very first time I was told about this project this was my idea, but it did not translate into real life as I had imagined.  It will at least be functional, whereas the second is strictly sculptural.  The first might look a lot nicer once glazed.  I am so undecided as to how I want to glaze the second one.

Also, I got some nice bowls out of the gas kiln this week, as well as my lidded vessels out of the electric that I loaded.  I am super happy with my bowls.  I got some really nice colors.  As you can see, I have a lot to glaze!

Next week I need to finish my organ sculptures, make another wheel-thrown sculpture, and I have a few more clay printing methods to try.  I am really happy with the ceramic week I had.  The ceramic studio was a very positive environment this week.  I needed that.  Now I am stoked for the remainder of the semester and summer ceramics.