Sunday, August 8, 2010

Progress in the Studio

I have been working on some new ideas as well as refining some forms I have been making for a while. I have been making this mug form for a while but they are still evolving. I have recently changed the feet on them as well as the texture.

I have been working on a new bottle form recently. These bottles are made in two sections, the body, and the neck. I trim the foot on the body when it is leather hard and then attach the leather hard neck. I like the simplicity of this process but it is hard to get the proportions right this way. I am going to try throwing the neck on top of the body, I have done this before and it makes it much easier to get the shape and proportions right. I like the marks made on the body of the pot by attaching the neck.(surform, trimming, and slip) I attach the neck, then surform it to get the profile I want, then trim off some of the surform marks, then add slip over the join and smooth it with a rib. The slip creates a better join and also comes up over the shoulder which makes it look as though the neck comes from inside the body and not on top of it. I learned this technique from Jason Hess, this is how he makes his bottles.

I have been trying to find a way to group several cups or yunomis as a set. I have been making slab trays, such as the one pictured above, to hold these "sets". My idea is to make lots of cups out of several different clays and then group them after they are fired. I'm not sure why but I really like the idea of grouping "sets" after they are fired. I think that this gives the opportunity to make a lot of pots that are for a specific project, as well as to pick the ones that are best after the firing as a set as opposed to making matching forms and grouping them regardless of how they turn out. I think that, with the design I have chosen to go with, they will also have somewhat of a sculptural presence. This is not to say that I don't want people to use my pots but I think these sets may be a special circumstance. I like the idea of taking a cup and putting it in a nonfunctional setting. There is nothing different about these cups that makes then nonfunctional but they will be part of a bigger piece as opposed to standing alone. My intent is to make people think of cups as art. I want to show that cups serve a purpose other than there intended function of holding your drink.Here is a sneak preview of the pots from NAU. This platter was tumble stacked in the side stoke of the double wide train. The blue color is from the pearl ash that we introduced into the kiln. I am going to take some "real" pictures of the new pots soon and I will post them when I do.

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