Blog, Blog, Blog!

Last week we had the Urban /Street/ Hip-Hop show in the SpaceLab, and I have to say that it turned out really really good. There was a good variety and amount of work and everyone was pretty excited about putting their work into the show. I was extremely happy with the way that the show turned out. This is the first show that I have ever put together and I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out and wether I would have enough stuff to fill the space and if people were going to back out at the last second. It was a really good experience for me and it was a really fun show to put together. There were no limitations or high expectations, just a bunch of kids getting together making work that is fun and creative.

I would love to put together a few more shows like this one before I graduate in 2012. There is something about having work in a themed show that is exciting, especially if it is with your peers. It gives you a chance to show your stuff and make a work that is specific to the show, which is a good change of pace from just making things that you normally would make.

As you can see from the photos the lemon project that I had been working on got finished for the show. I was pretty pleased with the overall appearance of the piece, but the jeweled lemon did not come out exactly the way that I had wanted. It was much harder to get the jewels to line up on the rounded surface of the lemon than it was on the gun that I previously did. This was a bit frustrating to me. I know know that it would have been a bit easier if I had bought smaller sized jewels and I think that would have looked a bit better as well. But overall I am fairly pleased. I would like to see what this piece would look like with the lemon that I glazed with mason stain, I may do this for the Open House.


For the Open House I would also like to put in my 2-liter bottles and the to-go boxes that I have been working on. They will probably be located in the Space Lab for the Earth Day Show. For the 2-liter bottles I plan to leave them as the raw bisque fired porcelain. I feel that this piece looks best this way because you can see all of the detail of the bottle and the label. For the to-go boxes though I am thinking that I will underglaze them so that they are a brighter white, and depending on how that turns out I may or may not add a clear glaze to them.
I think that I have everything fairly well done for the final critique. Although I do feel that my lidded form project could have been better, at least it is complete. As far as all of the other projects go I am happy with the way that they have come out. I feel that the work that I have done this semester has been much more productive than some of the semesters in the past. Although with the negativity that has been going on around the studio I do feel that this semester could have been a lot better.

I am looking forward to the Raku class in the summer, and I am especially looking forward to the break that I will have between the end of this semester and the beginning of the 2nd summer session. This break is exactly what I need to regroup and continue to make awesome Art for all of the world (IUS) to see!

Blog 7,8,9

I have been in sort of a funk lately when it comes to keeping up with everything that is going on in my life lately but, this week has been much better and hopefully for the rest of the semester I can put these issues aside and get some ceramics done.

I had my BFA critique a couple weeks ago and I think that it went pretty well. A lot of people had things to say, some comments were helpful and some weren't exactly in the direction that I see my work heading in, but they were still interesting points. I am still trying to take everything into consideration and figure out my next moves, as far as concepts go.

As far as the rest of the semester goes I am just going to try and finish the projects that I have started, the bottles, cups, lemons and to-go-boxes. I have been doing a lot of test firing on my styrofoam cups to see if I can get the clear glaze to quit cracking on them. I have gone from cone 06 to cone 4 and I think that I have finally found the key with cone 4. The lemons will be displayed in the "urban/hip-hop/street art" show that i am hosting in the spacelab during the week of April 3rd. I also hope to have a few pieces ready for the open house. Needless to say, I have quite a bit of casting, glazing, firing and focusing to do.

I have also been doing some throwing and I have to say the assignment of making lidded jars was quite a bit harder than I was expecting. All of the past assignments came pretty natural, but with this one is a little more complicated. Making two seperate parts that look good together and also fit well together was quite the challenge and I am afraid that it is going to take me a bit longer to master this one.

As I said before I have been out of it for a little bit but I think that this probably happens to the best of us, and now I am back in it.

Week 6

This week has been a pretty busy one. I made two molds, one was a two-part mold of 2 lemons and the other is a small to-go box, which is a one-part mold. The lemons are for a show that I am trying to put together in the space lab. I am trying to get a few fellow students to go in with me and do a
hip-hop themed show. The lemons represent a song that is popular in the hip-hop world. I am very excited about this show because I think that it is going to be very interesting and something that IUS has not seen before. It is also exciting because I am sort of the curator of the show.
I also tried to make the brass knuckles mold for the second time and it did not work again. i am thinking that there are some under cuts in the finger holes which is making it get stuck in the mold. I don't want to give up on this idea so i can either use plastoscene and maybe fill the spaces that I think are getting stuck, or I was thinking that I could get a pair of plastic ones. Either way I am going to be making a mold of these brass knuckles eventually.
I did the first pour into the large to-go box and it looks like it is going to be a good mold. I tried to get the cast out too soon after it was poured and it tore in a few places but the first pour doesn't really count as a keeper. I also got a few bottles and a 2-liter finished this week.


I also got my mugs glazed this week. Getting things glazed is always a relief, because it is the final step to being finished. Ceramics is such a long process, and there are a hundred things that you are trying to work on, so to be at the final step on a project is a good feeling.

Week 5

I casted the 2-liter bottle this week and it turned out really good. I am happy with the detail in the wrapper and the cap, although there are a few places where the plaster didn't get smooth i don't think that it hurts the look of the bottle any.

Earlier in the week I got all of my bowls thrown and trimmed and was suprised at how easy it was. I seemed to make the bowls a lot faster than the cylinders and they look more professional than the cylinders too. I cannot wait to throw out my old bowls and use the ones that I made.

I also made a mold of a pair of brass knuckles this week as well as a styrofoam to-go box. I am going to use the brass knuckles as a handle on the styrofoam cups to make mugs out of them. I want to put them into a show or my white trash show with the names "mugged", "Muggers' ...ect. I will probably glaze the brass knuckles with gold and silver luster.
i plan to make a few other to-go boxes and possibly stack them into a pile or possibly have just one or a few, i haven't decided yet. I am thinking that the title of this piece will be 'For here or forever' to represent just one of many ways that we use trash and then discard it later.
We get to-go boxes because we don't want to waste food, and we don't even think about wasting the box, and how it is going to be on the Earth for years to come.

Week 4

I did the first casting of my 2liter bottle mold and I am super excited about it. It worked!! It is so smooth and perfect, and it should be after working on making the mold for five days. I got too impatient on taking it out though and it ripped apart at the seams, But that's ok because it is so awesome.
I also have been working on my mugs this week and they are coming out pretty well. I have always hated putting handles on perfectly good cups but these are looking alright. I tried a bunch of different shapes and quite a few different handles, some more conventional than others.


My project for the critique this week was of my styrofoam cups. I am going to be glazing the cups in "pretty" glazes. Trying to make something that is considered cheap and very disposable into fine porcelain cups fitted with traditional blue glazes, gold and silver luster, and possibly some crystals.
I am going to be using these different pieces of trash for different projects, and then in the end they will be put together. Sort of a means to an end. Much like trash is. The bottles, boxes, ect. that we throw away all the time are just a means to what is inside of them and once that is gone they mean nothing. and they are sent to the landfill

Week 3

This week has been pretty productive but not as productive as it could have been. I have been working on a 3 part mold of a 2-liter bottle and ran into a complication. I made the bottom part of the mold twice, and both times I got air bubbles in the plaster. I think that they were getting stuck under neath of the bottom of the bottle because I was trying to do the mold on its side. So with a little innovation and a lot of heavy stuff I had to come up with a way to set up the mold so that the air bubbles would not get trapped underneath the bottle. As the pictures show it was quite a task to make the mold this way, but i just couldn't live with a mold that was not smooth and bubble free. This process was very time consuming, but in the process I learned a lot about what i need to do the next time to hopefully only have to do each step of the process once.
Friday I went to school and worked on casting bottles and cups, as well as making the third part of my 2-liter mold for the third time. Third time is the charm :).... I hope. I also loaded a bisque kiln with my cups, bottles and thrown cylinders, as well as whatever else was on the shelves to be loaded.

Week 2

Geez... All of these snow days are really getting pretty annoying when it comes to getting some work done in the studio. But besides all of this snowy excitement I have finished my 20 cylinders and have made 6 new bottles and about 13 styrofoam cups to add to the collection of white trash that is piling up around my studio. I have quite a few molds other pieces of trash in the works to make molds of including a 2-liter, which would be a 3 part mold, a to go box, egg carton, milk jug... I am also going to try to make "paper" from slip and if it doesn't work I may buy some Karaflex, which has the look of paper. I don't have any photos yet because i seem to not be able to remember my camera but I will add them as soon as I can.

We Meet Again

So here we are, back at the beginning of another semester with high hopes and lots of ideas. Over the break I made a few bottles and cups to continue with my idea of white trash. I will continue to make many more of these and also add lots of different pieces of trash to what will eventually be a massive amount of "white trash".

I have also been throwing some cylinders this week for the new throwing projects that we have been assigned. I am very excited about these assignments because they give us a chance to not only work on our own projects but it also gives us a chance to let go of those ideas and work on things that are less stressing. Without these throwing assignments it seems to be hard to find the time to sit down and throw, so I am happy to have this time built into our schedules.

That's all for this week!