Week 4 - Done with Building Big

As the title states, this is the last week I’ll be building large-scale for the foreseeable future. I’m feeling very relieved about that, as these past couple sculptures have taken up all my energy in the studio. Obviously, I still have to finish them, but I am done with coiling paper clay, probably until the summer. I went through the entire bucket I mixed back in October, with only about 5 pounds to spare. These things are HEAVY. The supports in this stool are probably overkill. When I return to big forms, one of my goals will be to lighten them up and focus more on weight distribution.

With Jooby’s help, I was able to slide this heavy a** chair off the lift into Big Bailey. The printmaking studio’s new lift is awesome and made it really easy to smoothly line it up with the kiln shelf. I plan to fire off the bisque next Monday, with hopes that the janky supports I’ve built will take some of the weight off the sculpture’s tiny tripod legs. Realistically, this thing isn’t not going to crack from the massive amount of weight being put on those legs. But also, this paper stoneware has notoriously surprised me with the amount of abuse it can withstand, so we shall see.

Finishing and loading the chair was my main focus of the week, but I also put some hours into this sculptural stein. It’s not finished yet.

I also applied some of my goblets to a show.

I didn’t get in the studio as much as I wanted to the past week due to working extra shifts at Canary Club and other life stuff. This coming week, I’m looking forward to playing with that dark clay I mixed up and starting some subtractive sculptural forms.

weekly gratitudes

~ class starting at 3pm instead of 9am

~ oakley’s finally back!!! I missed that dog so much.

artists on my mind:

Barbo Åberg