Week 14 - Making Blobs & Writing Blogs

I am ecstatic to report that the wood firing was a success, and my big sculpture survived without a crack!

Last week, I worked on finishing and documenting my pieces from the wood firing. It was a bit of a challenge to get the tumble stacked cup that fused to my big sculpture unstuck, but I managed to do so with the help of GH’s diamond core Dremel bits. I am overjoyed with the results of the wood firing. The one problematic result was that the stoneware I used bloated and bubbled in places, primarily on my goblets. I think this is due to a high iron content in the clay body from the redart. I haven’t run into this issue in the soda, so I assume this happened above cone 10 temperatures.

I also applied to Manifest Gallery’s Regional Showcase open call with my large sculpture and one of my wood-fired goblets (images to the right).

This week, I focused on installing my collaborative Spacelab show with Hailey and Max, as well as finally returning to the half of my two part sculpture that collapsed last week.

I had a lot of fun with the Spacelab show. Hailey, Max, and I had some conversations prior to installing about common themes in our work and landed on the ideas of earth and rituals. We decided on the specific notion of building separate alter spaces for our work and using real dirt to create a joint environment for them to live, and to use red iron oxide pigment to paint the walls behind our alters. I chose to showcase my recent wood-fired successes and felt that they worked really harmoniously together due to the similar surfaces. I played around with allowing one of the cups I’d tumble-stacked live on the larger form and liked that relationship too. I feel that the functional vessels look like they could have been birthed from the larger sculpture and look forward to playing with that more in the future.

I ran into a challenge while figuring out how to display my sculpture and goblets in a way that felt true to both their imagined context and the context of an “alter.” I see my forms as literal rocks and landscapes, so white pedestals often are my enemy. I also wanted to play more with levels and have my installation be oriented low to the ground, to encourage the assumption that my forms had emerged from the earth. So I crossed my fingers that my plan would work, bought a sheet of 1in. foamular board and went to town with the hand saws, shir forms, and spray paint and created my own “rock” pedestal. With the help of actual dirt and low lighting, I think it is really successful. In the show critique, it was suggested that I go further with this pedestal idea and create ones of various heights. Once I have more work to showcase, I would love to fill the Spacelab with rock pedestals. My only hurdle there is budget, but I will definitely keep exploring nontraditional pedestals.

I’m finally back in my sculpting groove after the month long hiatus. I am nearing the finish of half of my tall two-parter sculpture that I plan to bisque and potentially soda fire before the end of the month. I’ve gone back and forth on if I want it to be functional as a lamp, but I think I will leave it as a nonfunctional monolith — if the two parts survive and fit together decently, that is. It feels so good to be working this big!

weekly gratitudes

~ Friendsgiving!

~ Taking time to rest and have fun with friends

~ My brother making it out of a pretty big/scary surgery

thinking about:

I am creative even when I am not creating. Being patient with myself. Discovering / rediscovering parts of my identity.