Wk 17 - tutorials and a play with clay
After doing a lot of research over the past couple weeks I really wanted to knuckle down and just make this week. For week 4 (or 17) my aim is to keep organically developing my processes and narrow down my inspirational artists/works and do studies over the next few week in order to develop my practice.
I tried developing recreations of real antler and difficult forms with ceramics as representative and realistic sculpture but struggled to showcase their vitality but allowed me to develop my confidence with clay as a medium and my skills as a potter in alternative building methods
why not plaster mould? Asked Pernille - because it loses its vitality. It becomes dead and stagnant…
Erica
Death, growth, mutations - The Quick and The Dead by Joy Williams (2000)
Sean
Hygge
pigeons - dove vs rats
moving away from realism into abstraction
stoneware and porcelain is heat/microwave friendly
What Next?
Improve my spontaneity with the material by better prepping my materials and tools, aka. water and sponge on hand, moist clay etc. not running around and breaking my immersion from the process.
Do more research into different industry used techniques to improve my free hand skills. i.e. applying cling film to the piece’s surface before texturing it so it doesn’t crack and crumble.
I’ve been playing with Raku Firing, Grogging porcelain for structural security and abstract forming (pictured in order going down). But just materials in general, the history of porcelain as a rarity, as a delicacy in clay form and strength in fired form.
I contrasted it with steel rods which I blacksmithed with the intentions of developing a full rack of antlers without worrying about the breaking that happens with ceramics however due to time restraints the undeveloped tips held their own power.
I got questioned on my choice of ceramics by Pernille Spence during my tutorial where my more organic and intuitive forms where discribed as “Poor copies” of the originals which they were never meant to be. I learned this week to remove the real antlers from my space as although they were a huge reference point for me I didn’t want people to think that they were used as a direct reference point. My whole exhibition is founded on the in between spaces of past-present, here-there, was-am. As the space is intended to be liminal I didn’t believe it made sense to incorporate found objects in the space. I wanted all the works in the space to be made by myself and, at the very least, one-step removed from their source
Katie Ventress is a big inspiration for me as a woman entering the metalwork studio. She has had apprenticeships and now has her own shop in england and creates beautiful organic works that counter the material like the ones below -
Next semester when I have more time I want to connect my pieces to produce a full rack of antlers and not just the tips. And because I have more structural security to be ambitious with this it would be interesting to create the baby, female and bull antlers as they’re all vastly different and then consider Moose Reindeer, Scottish Red deer and do some cultural difference analysis through the landscape
Refs
Williams, J. (2000) The Quick and The Dead
https://denmark.dk/people-and-culture/hygge
https://amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/dec/14/cosagach-is-the-scottish-hygge-more-about-wet-moss-than-warm-blankets
https://www.spoon-tamago.com/tetanpo-ceramic-hand-warmer/