Vessel

   To make these pieces I had to learn to throw on the wheel, which was a challenge all in itself.  Originally, I wanted to make longer, skinnier cups, but every time I got the piece to the height and the width I wanted, inevitably something would happen, so I gave up on the specificity of that design for shorter, wider cups.  I almost think that that worked out better, in the long run. Another challenge was the forshortening of the faces.  I don't know if you would call it foreshortening in this term, but I was trying to take the flat fronts of the cups and give them dog/canine faces.  So, I slipped-scored clay noses to the front to try to make it look like the noses were coming out, but I don't know how well I accomplished that.
   All in all, I think it was really successful and I am so happy!  Some of the old glazed I used disn't work out so well … I sort of expected that to happen, though.  So, I'm going over it with clear glaze. But it looks much better than I thought it would, and I'm so happy to see everything that I worked on as a viable product.  I honestly thought they were going to explode in the kiln or somehow break before I ever got to see them finished.
     I hope that they're going to be functional.  I hope I can fix up the glaze enough to be able to drink out of them.  That would be the coolest thing ever.
     All characters are owned by Tom Siddell.

Pinterest Inspiration Board

It's here. 

Molds

I hate molds.

I did not do a full size mold because my vessels were slowly drying and I was in a bit of a panic, so I did one of the ice cube molds.  I don't know if it was my fault or if that was just what the mold looked like, but it came out looking insanely creepy.  And I couldn't fit the clay into all the crevices?  

   There was that same lack of control, I guess.  Maybe if I ever use one of the bigger molds, I'll like the experience better.

Pit Firing

I guess my process was the same as the sort as the lady in the video showed us?  I didn't really use a form, though, because I wanted a smaller cup than a juice cup. (I'm making this for my mother for her birthday, and she likes small pottery cups.)  So, I sort of just eyed how much clay I would need.  It wasn't really the best process, I don't think, because there was an excess of clay on the walls, and they got all wavy. Also the clay cracked before it was biqused, and I think that was because there was an excess of clay.  So.
      I don't know if this is a style I'm drawn to? I sort of put the burning stuff wrong, so it doesn't look as good as I wanted to.  If I could do it correctly, I think that it would be a really interesting technique.  I don't really like the lack of control, either.

Relief

For my piece, I made four tiles.  I'm waiting for them to be glaze fired, so I can paint the hand with acrylics.  I really liked my hand.  The hand in the middle.  I'm not usually good at drawing hands, so that's one of the reasons why I wanted to do one in clay, just as practice.  It came out far better than expected, though, so I'm very happy. 

     I used a process that was very much the same as the practice relief tile I made, with the leaves, except I think I made the tiles too skinny, or else I just scraped too much off, because they're very thin.  The bottom left hand one actually broke, and I gave up trying to fix it because that was breaking it more. So hopefully I'll be able to glue them together later. I'm pretty proud of my flowers, the Baby's Breath, I guess.  I attached a whole bunch of little balls of clay onto a raised up piece of clay through scoring, and then I just pulverized them with a clay tool, so they're all uneven and mushed in several places, and have a texture to them.  I show more detailed pictures when I finish.  I glazed the back a clearish/white, the daisy petals purple, and the centers yellow. 

   Next time, I think I'll be more carefully with everything.  Maybe more precise as well.  Halfway through, I got very exasperated with it, because the clay kept drying up and I had to redo the hand several times, so I didn't take as much time as I should've and broke it and made it uneven and didn't texture it as much as I would've liked to.  

    I made the piece for practice with hands, but also because I just had this image in my mind.  I don't know where it came from, but I liked the simplicity of the colors but thought that the actually sculpting would be complex.  

Mini Project

This is my clay mini project!  I don't think it has been fired yet. Anyways, I really enjoyed working on this, but I'm sort of disappointed because they don't really have the texture of real leaves?  But at the same time, I wanted the veins to bump out, instead of indent, which is what would've happened if I'd laid a leaf on it . . . but, I really enjoy clay, so.

I guess I took two pictures of this one so you could see the structure of it?  It was supposed to be an airplane, and when you opened it up the airplane would look like it was flying?  Um, I guess I'll give myself credit for trying.  The real problem with this is that I hate meausuring and can't cut a straight line to save my life, and also this wasn't really well planned out?  Because I thought I understood what I was doing, but it was only when I had stuff glued and cut that I realized it was going to go together as I had planned.   

      I improvised a bit.  And I probably won't be using paper again. 

I really liked the cardboard project. I think I liked it the best out of all of them.  I messed up the planning, though. I should've just had the wiggles underneath the hand, instead of going down to the bottom layer?  At the same time, though, I think that would make the hand look flat, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  

Inspired Artist

I chose Guillaume Lachapelle for my 'inspired artist' because I saw his work featured on thisiscolossal.com.  Specifically, the images of the art that I saw on the site caught my attention.  I believe the show is called 'Visions.'  It's one object, or more like a scene, and mirrors are placed so it repeats over and over again.

This is probably my favorite picture of that show.  It looks like a whole world is incased within that little box.  And that the worlds he chose to represent were so typical.  A street lamp, a suburban development, a hallway, a subway car that seems to extend into infinity.  And, beyond that, what really interests me in these pieces is the light.
     Because, of course, the art is made out of the shaping of light, and the contrast that arises between both dark and light. The main subject is not light, of course, but especially in the shadowboxes of the streetlight and the development, there are little pin points of light that define the object you're looking at.  At least, in my perspective.  I obviously do not know what I am talking about at all.
     Also, some other pieces I saw of his, that were not in his show, had a similar quality about them, though they weren't as much optical illusions as these were.  I wouldn't know what to call it, but it was all very elegant intricate, and I really enjoy sculptures that value those characteristics.

This library is also stunning.  At least, I think it's a library? 

According to the site Art Mûr, Guillaume Lachapelle was born in 1974 in Stoke, Quebec.  He creates some of his work with 3D printers, though it didn't specify if that was how he'd created these works.  Much of his other work also seemed interesting and similarly conceptual.  His work has been shown all over Canada, and once, notably, in France.  He has started a kickstarted campaign to go to the Venice Biennale with Simon Bilodeau.  He is talked about by many people, but he doesn't seem to have his own site.