This week is the last week before finals. I loaded my kiln this week and I hoped nothing exploded. I also unloaded it this week and surprise surprise nothing exploded. The front half of the face of one of my pieces did but it was easy to epoxy back together. Also here is one of my pieces done. She is missing here fish but she is finished and ready to go for critique.
I don’t have a lot of photos this week because everything is still drying out and still needs to be fired. The photo I did share is the ear tubes I’m working on. They have underglaze on them right now. I’m hoping to fire them have more underglaze decoration and also glazes. My figures will be painted after they are bisqued. I still have to do some intaglio prints sometime this week and I have to start making working for the sale at the end of the month as well as work for our wood fire in February of 2021.
So this week I’m waiting on my projects to dry a little bit more so they can be fired. My fish for my second project is ready to be bisqued. I can’t wait to see how the glaze flows into the crevices and melts. It will have fabric fins. I also threw a little this week so I could have some thrown things for our sale. I’m also gonna slab build as well as slip cast for the sale. I also was playing around with patterns for my pots and thought I would share this one. I like it but not sure what it would look good on. Hoping to get all my projects bisqued this week so I can focus on glazing all of next week.
So this week we I had my BFA critique. It was technically my first BFA critique sense joining the program since my springs BFA critique got cancelled due to COVID. There were some proportional issues with my figure which was to be expected. We all seemed to agree that focusing in on certain body parts or sections would be better than trying to due a whole figure so I can practice getting better at proportions. Everyone seemed to like my prints and wanted to seem them in clay. I also had a fabric piece that everyone seemed to like but they wanted to see how I could incorporate it better with my ceramics. Also this week I helped Sam load her cone 6 soda kiln and learned quite a bit in the process. She’s gonna do another one later this semester so I can’t wait to be able to put some stuff in there.
This week I turned in my proposal for my 3rd and final project for the semester. I’m going to make 3 sets of ear tubes that represent the struggle of my brother having them. Also me and Emily went and picked up some slip casting molds. I got some jars and a door bob mold which I’m excited about. Also I got to look at some wood fire and soda fired colored slip test tiles and fined out which ones that still need to be done. I thinks same is going to do a cone 6 soda firing test cuz it looks like we already have a cone 10 soda set. There were 2 test tiles that didn’t survive the wood fire so they will have to be remade. We also talked about pushing our wood fire back to next year so we can focus our online sell for December.
So this week I really haven’t been able to focus on my ceramics due to having a project dead line for my printmaking class. But now that that’s done I can focus strictly on ceramics for the next 2 weeks because because my bfa crit is October 22nd. Also a few things that I made over the summer have finally started to dry out and I’m hopping to put them in the wood fire that we are doing in December. Also dirtbags printed shirts which was fun. I accidentally printed one upside down but hey I still like and I’m going to keep it.
So this week I decided to work on some stuff for the wood fire kiln. I’ve had two bowls already done and decided to make another one. I also wanted to work with this seed or egg shaped molds. Not sure what they are going to turn into but I will figure out what I want to do there. I also built my armature for my next project. The sketch is in the background of it. My other girl is currently stiffening up a little bit so I can cut her in half and hollow her out.
So I worked on my figure this week. I didn’t get to work on it as much as I wanted to because work keeps changing my schedule so to COVID. I’m hope that chills out later this week which it should bet it’s kinda a nightmare. Despite this I think I’m making pretty good progress on my figure. I’m finding it hard to let my clay dry out though. I need it to stiffen up so I can start adding the subtle muscle details but I can’t really let it get to stiff. The plastic bags really lock in the moisture of the clay and some times it’s hard to judge if the clay is still gonna be wet or stiff. I can’t really not cover it in strips of plastic because with my work schedule I don’t know when I’ll be able to get to my piece over the weekends. It’s not really I huge issue I’m making it work and able to add no stuff each day even if it’s just a little bit. It just more frustrating I haven’t found a rhythm of work were I can confidently control how wet or dry my figure gets. I was really happy to get the torso and chest area started. I need to re work the breast area but I’m hopping it all gets stiff enough where I can start shaving some clay off all of it to slim her down and smooth out areas. I plan to also try and get her back done so I can move on to the arms and head and then start hollowing her out.
This week I’m just sharing my research that I have been doing it says printmaking at the top but this is research for my BFA in general. I’m trying to figure out what a want to pursue as far as a single body of work. COVID situation and the hospitalization and deaths around it have brought up a lot of family health issues. So I thought that maybe focusing on this and kind of working through my fear surrounding death and hospitalization with my art might be a good thing to research and dive into. This research revolves around my brother and the many surgeries that he has endured since birth. I think I’ll make quite a few prints about this topic but I’d also like to use ceramics to dive deeper into the suffering that my brother went through but also my parents as well. My other projects going well I just forgot to take pictures this week.
So we started school back up this fall. It’s a lot different this semester, we’re taking a lot of precautions to keep everyone safe. This week we also got assigned the Invent Your Own project. I decided to create a self portrait project. I decided to do Sam’s project which was rolling three catagoried dice and creating something using what was rolled. I got Spain, pink, and the roaring 20s. I decided to create a matador flapper. I’m also wanting to sculpt figures of different races and ethnicities so I decided to print off inspiration/reference photos of African and African American women and try sculpting that in this first project as well.
