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.