Clay in Car

Here is the clay pot, after being glazed, on its way home. It's in the basement now, awaiting mosaicking and grouting. What its future holds after that, I'm not sure.

Clay Update

Here is the mystery pot just after getting five coats of glaze. I used the sprayer in a hooded, vented area (wouldn't want to get black lung or anything else nasty) at the FIA. It was quite satisfying watching it get darker and darker and (or so I hope) softer looking with the velvet underglaze. I don't know when it will get fired, but I am rather anxious to find out if it will make the journey to 1900-odd degrees and back without cracking. (Hmm. Sounds like a Jules Verne novel.) The long term plan is to mosaic the inside of the...mouth (?) with glass, light green and turquoise.
And here is my house. I did say in an earlier blog entry that I wanted to learn how to work with slabs and here is what I came up with. Each of the three levels is a separate box that, I hope, will survive both the bisque firing and the glaze firing without cracking or distorting to the point of no longer fitting together snugly. This structure has no purpose but I am rather satisfied with it nonetheless.

The Nautilus

Mosaics class ended and not too surprisingly I didn't finish The Nautilus. But I did get some decent work done and it is possible to see where this is all going. I hope to finish the red/orange/cream part of the shell and then will work on the backdrop once the next class session starts.
I have decided to chip off the tentacles and start again. Not only are they moving in the wrong direction (they will start in the shell and wiggle off to the lower right corner) but I decided that I want to make the tentacles creamy yellow/pinkish/whitish instead of the blue/green/purple that I have now. I want to have the blue/purple for the background. I chipped off one piece, and that only took about five seconds so, if you multiply that by about 300 pieces, I should get the old tentacles cleared away before I die of old age.

Clay...what is it?

Here is the clay thing so far. It's sitting, drying out, waiting for the first firing, on a shelf next to a window which is why it looks so stark and alone. I am not sure how I am going to glaze it, but I do know that I want the glaze to be very matte and variegated. I ended up using 40 pounds of clay so it is a big baby. A few (a very few) other FIA students have praised me for making this, one guy (who really reminds me of a type I used to see quite often when I lived in LA but haven't seen much of since moving to the heartland) stopped me in the parking lot to ask me about it and stated very enthusiastically how "cool" he thought it was. Others just seem bemused if not slightly offended. One person went out of her way to explain to me why making such large things is unduly burdensome on the school because of the kiln space it will take up. Those hallway monitors who hassled me 30 years ago have all grown up and are still at it.