The entirely over due Concentration #2!!!

                      Continuing on the idea of how man-made object correlate with nature, I decided to explore more of the manufactured goods side of the industry. My thoughts wondered towards the question what is the most common of the manufactured good? Pencils! Looking around my desk, I found some inspiration in something I made over 7 years ago. I  had a bunch of flower pens I made a few years ago, and realize the nice yellow one would be interesting the contrast with. It would make a nice natural object that would work well with the thin multitude of pencils: a fully petaled yellow flower. 

The tacky fake flower pen looked like the much nicer flower above, and thus I started to make my flower and pencil piece. I started to make the flower petals by rolling out a slab of Low Fire Tactless White. I cut up the clay in thin strips and varied the length of each one, stacking each on top of each other. I realized it would be difficult to simply add the petals, on top of each other, and found it necessary to stabilize the piece by putting it on a half circle and blending it in. I added deminsion to the petals by varying the thickness and adding some curviture. I made sure to turn the ends upwards, and as I worked in, the petals got shorter and more realistic looking. I realized made my flower on too big of a scale that it didn't make sense to make a whole half, like I was orginally planning, and instead made it a fourth. The flower part was turning out beautifully, and thus I moved on the pencil aspect.

My original thought was to cut up pencils and have the sharpened tip pointing out. I layed it out and this is what it looked like. However I kept thinking and realized it would very difficult to cut and support the pencils having them layered over each other like the petals would be. I considered trying hot glue but decided to switch to making the pencil out of clay, as it also worked better with my concentration to make the entire thing out of clay.

 I started to make the pencils by trying a technique/ tool I have used before. The extruder gun! It actually took a little bit of hand muscle to push the clay out into the clindrical shape I started with for making my pencils.

I tried a few techniques to get the hexagonal shape for the pencil. I tried shaping with my fingers, using pressure from a wooden board, and using a wooden shaping tool, but found dropping the pencil carefully was the most effective. It was pretty time consuming, but worked out looking very nicely. For the sharp point of the pencil, I created it by shaving off the extra clay.

After firing the two pieces I set off the glaze them, debating between how to glaze the flower petals. I decided on an ombre yellow for the petals. The pencils were obviously glazed with black and a yellow orange color to resemble the real life.

Reflection

I am not 100 percent happy with how the piece is seperate pieces pieces but I am proud of the flower part. In retrospect, I have been thinking a lot more of the industrial aspects of my concentraion, and have realized that a pencil is not white as industrial as my current ideas for my concentration.