Thursday, November 18, 2010

progress in the studio

I have been focusing a lot on feet lately. When I think of good feet words that come to mind are satisfying, and confident. These words seem to contrast somewhat because a satisfying foot needs to be of a certain size; however, enough material needs to be removed in trimming in order to show confidence with your chosen tool. When these two factors are well balanced the resulting foot can be spectacular but if a foot is to skimpy or to chunky then it can ruin a pot. On the bowl pictured above I wanted to create a very tall foot. I feel that I may have over emphasized the satisfying part of the foot with its large scale, while not successfully conveying a confident statement with the foot because of how much cutting is required to produce this larger foot.
I have been having some problems with these inset lids. I need the knob to be a certain height to be easy to grab but I do not want it to be too tall and break up the flow of the pot. I have also been working on cleaning up the knobs and adding the same texture to them as the rest of the pot.
This is a new vase form for me. It is kind of inspired by Bede Clark, but I think they are still evolving. I am usually not one for the little pellets or smeared balls of clay but I think they work as little handle accent things.
I also revisited a faceted bottle form I haven't made for a little while. These pots are really about the small details and proportions, which makes them very difficult and frustrating to make. I'm not sure if I will make anymore of these, they may have to be one of those pots that I admire of others but never make myself.

4 comments:

  1. these pots look good. you should post larger photos so we can click on the photo and see the pots better.

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  2. I will try to but these are the size my camera takes them in and I think if I resized them to be larger they would be very pixelated.

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  3. Your faceted bottle is really good Matty. I have experimented with faceting cups before and it can be so frustrating because I always seem to either cut all the way through my cup or they dont turn out looking very even at all.

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  4. I facet them when they are like soft leather hard so that helps to keep them even. I think you just have to make a lot of pots to facet in order to get the thickness right.

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