Raku, Dia de los muertos,BFA crit

This week was a very busy one. I had some trials and tribulations when it came to firing the glaze on my styrofoam cups, I had my BFA critique and we had another raku party. My critique went really well and it made me think about where my work is going and where I want it to go. We also talked about how i seem to jump around from semester to semester with the projects that i do, instead of sticking with one "theme" throughout. I don't feel that a theme has to be the same object though. I feel that my theme is about people and the way that my work and the objects that I make affect them, and can affect their lives.
The work in the pictures this week are from the raku firing. I am super pleased with the way that they came out. the three madonna's are for the day of the dead show that is going up at IUS this week. I spent quite a bit of time glazing them and it paid off. I made all of their exposed skin look like skeletons for the day of the dead.

After Jonathan's critique I have been thinking a lot about our conversation of having an idea and running with it instead of trying to do two or three different things and not being very far along on any of them because you have too many projects going on at once. So with this in mind I have decided to hold off on the lightning bolt idea. Although I really like the idea I have too many irons in the fire so to speak. I really want to continue to throw and make improvements in that area. I have also gotten into to styrofoam cups and have quite a few ideas for those. This week has been an extremely busy one and unfortunetly i did not have much time to work on my ceramics, but here is what I have. A few of my cups were bisque fired this week so I had the chance to start glazing them. Some of them I am going to leave the brite white that they are, others i am going to use as sort of a canvas for splattering glaze on. I am painting like this in my painting class that I am taking so why not incorporate it into my ceramics? The styrofoam cups are the perfect white canvas for the job, and splatters always give me this urban/graffiti feeling. Styrofoam cups can be seen all over the city streets and so can graffiti, if this makes any since??? If not, I just wanted to do it. :) Anyway, keeping with the environmental theme that I talked about last week I have had a few other ideas for that such as putting dates on a large number of cups to represent the large number of years that it takes a styrofoam cup to decompose. I also had the idea to get a trash can and fill the inside with the cups, remove the trash can, and have all of these squished cups in the form of the can. I have not started on either of these ideas yet but they could be in the works very soon. That's all I have for now.

White Trash

This week I tried to throw some things but it didn't really work out so great because I was sick and the mood just wasn't there. But I did make some of my styrofoam cups and I am really liking the way that they are coming out. Once they are fired they will be brite white like styrofoam cups are. Since my critique I have been trying to think of different things that I can do with them. So here are a few of those ideas... I have manipulated some of the cups so that they fit your hand and look worn and beaten. I am also trying to think about environmental issues and and some different ways to express this. The "Don't be trashy" cup with the trash can on the front of it and the Clock cup that reads "Time" are one example of this. These are fun objects and vessels so I am trying to play off of this and make them fun and funny. There will be a lot more ideas to come so stay tuned :)

Raku

So, the Dirt Bags had a Space Lab show last week and I had the chance to display my Raku babies. I really liked how they looked on the wall. When I started looking at them I thought that it seemed like they had their own personality. They are cohesive as a group, but they are just as powerful on their own. They are creepy but still cool. I have hundreds of these ceramic baby dolls so I have been transforming them into different works. Everything that I have done with them so far has been pretty successful in it's own way, so Im excited to see where else they take me.

Skeletons, Styrofoam and Glaze

Well, this week was veryfunand eventful. The Dirt Bags had their first official Raku party which was a blast. My skeleton babies that I made for the day of the dead Alter turned out great. They are so creepy and cool and I think that they are perfect for the occasion. They look so dirty and burned like they just rose from the dead. I really love them.

My styrofoam cups are turning out good and are full of fun possibilities. Like I said from my critique write up I want to alter the cups in ways that you would treat a regular styrofoam cup. I also want to put screen printed images on them

Last weekend our pieces came out of theas well. I have made a new mold of two larger cups.

gas kiln and with them came a few suprises. This was the first time that I had a large quantity of pieces in the kiln so getting to see them after the firing was like Christmas

morning. There were quite a few pieces that came out just the way that I thought they would, but there were also pieces where the glaze did not come out anything like they were supposed to. It is possible that the glazes did not get hot enough so we are going to refire those pieces

and see if they come out any better. If not we may have to re mix some of the glazes.

That's all I have for this week...until next time.

I just had to share this one.

crit

So, this week I had my first critique in ceramics class, and I think that it went really well. Everyone had quite a few good things to say, and good suggestions and comments too. I showed quite a few different things that I have been working on and I think the styrofoam cups had the most impact. Chris said something about maybe thinking about what kids do with styrofoam cups and incorporating that into the cups. And Sue said that maybe I should bite them and leave bite marks in them. I thought that these were great ideas. I already started writing words into the cups, but these ideas really will push the work further. I was also thinking about tearing the cups, poking holes into them, and using screen printing to add graphic images to them. I really like the way that these cups are turning out, they have a lot of detail and look like real styrofoam cups would. It doesn't take long for a styrofoam cup to get banged up and these cups look just like that. They are fun to look at and fun to make and I imagine they will be fun to drink out of as well.. Which makes me happy.

I have also been working on my throwing technique, and experimenting with screen printing. The next step for both of these is going to be incorporating the two together. I really want to keep doing both of these.

I didn't get a whole lot of feedback on my lightning bolt idea, because it is so early into the project there isn't much to critique yet, but I think that the finished product is going to be a really cool site to see. This project could take me awhile to get finished because there are a lot of things that I have never done before, so there will be quite a bit of experimenting ahead.

I have a lot of work ahead of me but I am very excited to jump into it.