There are very few workshop days available in December, but I want to focus on textures. I want to use some of the reading and research from last month to inform my work this month. I am going to focus on carving and making surfaces ready to carve.
Here are some images I have collected, to show the sort of thing I am thinking about.
I started off with some wet clay left over from the Nativity Challenge, and made marks using pieces of wood. I like working with the wet clay, and some of the results, but they do not fit with the architectural aesthetic that I like. I think that I could use these as the basis of a simpler and more controlled design.
I also rolled some of the left over clay into slabs and curved them, using around a pipe or along a paper template. I then used a loop tool to add texture to see how this looked, using a William Mitchell inspired brutalist design. I carved the first piece whilst the clay was quite wet, and I liked this process, as the clay offered little resistance, and it was like drawing. It was quick and free, even though I chose quite a complex pattern. It is possible to see this freedom in the lines, as the marks are looser, and they taper at the ends. I had to carve this clay whilst it was on the plastic pipe.
This needed a bit of tidying up afterwards, in terms of both tidying the carved surface and cutting the slab to shape.
I also curved some of the slabs, based on lines drawn on a piece of paper, then added a haptic street map design. I left these pieces to go leatherhard before carving. I made them like this to answer two questions. Firstly to consider whether I wanted to make vessels or curved forms, as per Richard Serra. Secondly, because I am developing interlocking forms, and these meet that definition in a broad sense.
I like the fact that these can be nested together or separated, I also like the fact that they can be turned to show either the plain or the carved side. This gives a more flexible choice for display. I could have made these as narrow curved vessels, and would like to try that next. I would not use the street map design in its current form again, as it is too literal, although I did make it up in my sketchbook. However I like the idea of lines meeting up and connecting at different points, but probably in a more random way next time, and maybe marking the connecting points in some way.
The making process was more difficult than the last for a number of reasons. The clay was not supported by anything, so I had to support it or pick it up to work. As the clay was drier there was more resistance to the mark making, and the grog caught the carving tool, as the surrounding clay could not accommodate any movement. (This was made with left over clay, so some pieces of grog were quite large.) The biggest problem however was with the overall shape of the slabs.
In the original template the pieces were more rounded, almost semi-circular. Before carving I tidied these up with a scraper tool, removing any marks and flaws. This was a mistake as the pieces began to lose their shape and open out. I could not bend them back as the inside was now drier than the outside. I needed to tidy them up before they were curved, although the curving process itself causes fingerprints and marks. So what I actually need for these curves is a former.
I watched a Jim Robison tutorial this week, where he decorated an oval slab pot with slip. He had a pair of concave wooden formers made of plywood that curved and dried the clay at the same time. They had flat ends, so he could turn the slabs from horizontal to vertical once he was ready to join them together. This would be ideal for me, as I have been struggling to balance slabs on plastic drainpipes and then stop the pipes rolling and throwing off the clay. It would allow me to make flatter curves, and bigger pots. I need to look into this option.
The brutalist car park cake stand is finished, and bisque fired. I would like to glaze it with celadon, but reduction firing is not reliable, and I think it will be ruined. I have an icy blue glaze, that fires in an electric kiln, I'm afraid that might have to do.
It also raises the question as to whether I should pursue the celadon glaze research that I have started. I have eight months left, will reduction firings work?
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