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.

Little People!

It's the 50th Anniversary of the Little People sets. I remember playing with these exact sets for hours and hours when I was little. Looking at them makes me feel so happy inside.

Meanwhile, the clay

I started taking pottery (wheel) classes at the FIA about 4 years ago, and always enjoyed them but realized pretty quickly that I had no artistic skills when it came to making things on the wheel. Or so I told myself at the time--I just kept churning out these endless medium bowls and rather clunky urns. (Though, if you are into clunky urns, mine were pretty good.) But it just wasn't clicking. Then I stumbled into the mosaics class (and I can't remember why I decided to take that class but there you go--one of those fateful moments that are seemingly uncaused yet, in retrospect, seem to fit in perfectly with everything you want or have been trying to do) and suddenly I began thinking about structures in a whole new way--not as ends in themselves but as means to be covered in tiny shards of glass. And mosaics book are, as a rule, filled with fantastic pottery that people have then covered with tessarae--it was a whole new way of thinking about clay and glass. So, when the FIA offered a handbuilding glass that promised to teach the student anything they wanted to know how to do, I signed up and started making my list. Firsts, coil building. I wanted to know how to make coil rolls (see play dough reference below) and build them into fantasticly improbable shapes. I had some sort of seed pod or gourd in mind. We've just finished our third class and this is what I have so far:

It's about 30" tall and (so far) has used about 25 lbs of clay. I will probably use another 5 or so pounds before I am done. People wander in the classroom while I work and comment (always annoying)--so far I have been asked if it is a chiminia, fireplace (?) or flower pot (?!?). I tell them that it isn't anything yet and will never be anything functional but that doesn't seem to satisfy. I'm toying with the idea of mosaicking just inside the mouth of the vessal when it is done--whenever that will be. What next? Slabs. (That's a technical term. No really.)

More on The Nautilus

Saturday I went in to the FIA to donate a box of glass bits to the kids mosaic glass and took these photos of The Nautilus while I was there. It always feels like I am getting so much done but, when you see how much there is left to do, it looks like I have hardly begun.
I am still SO PISSED that I have the tentacles (not legs or arms, I now know--though tentacles with no suckers, so unlike octopi and squid) coming out of the eye area instead of to the left, the large part of the shell. ARGH! In theory I could bust all the glass and do it correctly. Sniff. I can't think about that.

I do like the green stripes (so far) that are on the shell. I bought every damn shade of green glass in existence, cut each up into little pieces (about 1/8" by 1/2" or so) and then set to it. It's surprisingly satisfying working up a color run all within one color shade. And it looks pretty good, too.