Crit 10-4-10

Hey everyone hope all is well, so. Had a crit today in ceramics


went well had good feed back . Some comments/ suggestions were were to make the weld marks less prominent and think about other ways to hang the pieces to where it could make the viewer a little more uncomfortable. Like over head more . Anothe was to present in some way more clear that it is a gift to.. . Whoever. Make it clear their is some importance to the piece personally, and or to the viewer . Otherwise all is on the way to being finished and shown in multiple ways till I'm happy and the viewer can leave with s feeling of what can I do, or why has this been allowed for this long type of feeling.

this week

Well for this past week i have been really busy with finishing up my work for the Fourth Wall show in Louisville. I made a stand to hold the fiece so that i could put on the fins. I had to use a t washer and a 2/4. to keep the spacing equal i used a 120 degreee triangle, inside a circle so the 3 points were evenly spaced and I centered the piece inside the circle.

I'm leting those set up then iI'm going to gold leaf the epoxy part to look like a golden weld.

Also this week i have finished laying the coild on my new box as shown in the post before. Now I'm going to let the slabs set up so i can put them all together.

Last night I helped fire a raku kiln till 4:00 in the morning. I fired a few bowls and cups, along with 2 more tall cylender pieces and fins. this was a chore but not as much as the first time i did it. I have perfected the cool down on the tall pieces, along with tried a new way. For the second one I set a barrel at an angle so i could lay the piece down in it. I had much along the wall, then i cowered the top side with much, stood the barrel up and covered with a lid, this was by far quicked to cool, but the piece did have a crack in it on one side. I dont mind the crack you cant even see it, but it was alot nicer than waithing 1.5 hours for the slow cool much way of making a trench in mulch and covering it till cool. I'mm very pleased with both ressults and anxcious to start the nex phase on them of reinforcing and assymbling them into the final product.

This past week i also made another model airplane, a bomber which coinsides with the other pieces I'm doing. This model was then dunked in slip twice and now will be coated in slip dipes tissue paper to finish it off. This plane will then be fired and painted to look like an under water plane wreck from WWII. This piece will also be in the Fourth Wall Show.

Alot has happened this week with great sucess and timing. now to get in gear one more time to finish this last push to get ready for the show. Very excited, and alittle soar from last night, but totally stoked for everything to come. Except for going to work now. have to be there at 5 so here you go a few pics, wish i had some more now but don't.

Blue Skies and Blood

This piece has been in the making for a week straight, not to mention all last symester making the mold for the piece, and casting them, finally geting some finished.

Here is the progression.

To make the mold i had to make a piece out of wet clay to cast the plaster around. I wheel threw a sold cylender and then trimmed it to the specks. I built up around the bottom and up to the center line, put up the walls to hold the plaster, and poured the first half.

Next I fliped the mold and made the other half.

Here is the mold finished on the scale.

As you can see the thing weighs about 85 pounds. EMPTY

Here I'm filling the mold with slip.

Here i fliped it onto a bucket to pour out the mold after it has formed the object.

The mold held about 3 gallons of the skip so the mold was about 115 pounds.

Pieces from the mold. grey is wet, white is dry.

This is the first fire

Now last Thursday I was invited to do a raku fire and i thought these would be most interesting to try, i figured they would all split and fracture, but i did have one come out whole, my intintion was to still glue them back together and create an instillation with them.

First glaze them

Then fire them, sorry no pic of this part, but you use a 55 gal metal drum cut doun and a gas burner to do it.

Then pull out the piece when the glaze is melted and glowing orange, and smother it in a cumbustable material.

Here is what it looked like 

 

Next/ my past 5 days fix them

I used a strong epoxy called PC7 I had to fix 2 totally and strengthen the other 2

While that dryed I put gold leaf on the fins

After reinforcing the pieces i poured even more glue in them to make em even stronger.

 

To be able to mount these things i had to create a mount.

I figured out a 2in washer, 1.5 in X 1/4/20 bolt worked with a few other washers and a nut.

I used the glue above to keep them together then i tightened the bolt and nut.

Now I atatched it to the piece with the epoxy.

Sanded it to shape and

Gold leafed it to match the fins

Now this week I will still finish them with the fins.

I'm excited and can't wait to install them in the show at the Sieghiem

I'll post more on this as it progresses

New Box

On the Left is an image of my coils I extruded. they are 1.5 in thick and around 1.5 ft long, these will be hand rolled to fit the desired width for the project. Image on the right is the idea. I would like to create 2 of these boxes but realize it may take too much space to do them all at ones. It's a rectangle box, 25in tall 25 cm wide. will have a bottom and possibly a lid. will be glazed accordingly.

First i extruded all the coils to save time. Then i slabed out 4 parts and cut the to the size I needed. The next step  I will work on tonight is to start coiling on top of the slabs a pattern of a horizontal split dinomd and vertical coils. I'm going to then slab a base and assemble the 4 sides to this. After that sets up I'm going to create the base. a sq. with dimonds cut out. I'm very excited about this piece. If all goes well I'm going to try and make a second to make a pair. I also played wiht the idea of reversing the coil pattern on the second for contrast. 

As you can see alot of space is required to work on all 4 at once. also another whole table to work the coils to desired thickness.

Here are some images of the work i did last week when the studio was empty, 5:30 pm - 6:30 am.

first I scored all the slabs so i could attatch the coils to make the pattern.

next I rolled out coild from my larg collection thate were extruded beforhand. I rolled a set of medium coils, about 1/4 in thick. then i rolled those out further to about 1/8 in thick.

I put all coild side by side and then cut out my priangle shape.

took the coils apart and attatched each one individually.

did this for all four slabs.

Then i used 3 medium coils vertically on the top, and 3 on the bottom. attatche these the same way.

After I attatched all 24 of these i continued to roll out more medium coils to the smaller size.

this is where i really about lost my mind. this took forever to attatch these onto the rest of the slab. I completed one slab and have to finish the last step on the other 3.

first week back

well for this first week back in school it was all about getting the clay i have ready to use. I first had to soften it back up from siting for the whole summer. I used some old shirts and towels soaked in water. I'm really happy with the clay i have. it's a mixture of 5 different clay bodies i had and a bunch of grog.

Yesterday i started building with it to try it out and test it. i first made a long skinny slab and proceeded to coil build on it. I built the piece on a plaster slab i made before to dry the bottom out while i was working. I made the vessel about 7 in tall. I call it a flower pot now that i finished it. i worked quick on it to see how much weight the walls could hold up before they collapsed. i reached that point. So this is what i meant i was testing. step two i also did yesterday and will check on today is, drying. as i said i built it on plaster, so the bottom will dry quick. i also just left it uncovered, which is crazy for a big piece. but i did the only thing is i covered the bottom inside to slow down the drying on that part, so the walls could catch up.

The flower pot is kinda where i wanted to go with my work for a couple weeks. this basic shape is what i want and i was experimenting with the texture. i believe now that i wanted to add coils to the outside to make a design and then add texture to them too. but didn't due to family matters that came up at last minute. This is only a test. So far so good. i like the clay and have high hopes for it. now to see if its still together, then how it fires.

sorry about the formatting of the pics. will work on top and right are finished. middle left are the slabs.