Concentration #5

             So this is the piece that totally evolved differently from my initial idea and actually ended up becoming two seperate concentration pieces. My original idea was to have the piece looking like it was about to tie itself into a knot. The industrial half would be rope, and the organic half I was thinking would be wheat. After general consensus, we agreed it would be better to not have the half of the knot be wheat--as rope is spun from wheats/grains--and decided to have the half be a vine.

 So with that in mind I started constructing the vines first. There was a nifty leaf tool that was kinda cool, but as I had a little trouble seeing the vine as a vine and not like a coil. Another concern  became evident that rope is generally thought as more of an organic type of material, so maybe I needed to look at something that screamed industrial and juxapose that next to the rope. What's super Industrial? A chain. And an even better idea--juxapose the chain to the vine.

I came back from the weekend and started extruding some clay for the rope part. But wait I wasn't doing rope anymore...A little oops on my part.

So I just used that clay as I started making the chains. (Side note-I had created chain links for one of my pieces last year, so I had a little experience. I'll post a pic of that piece later).

Looked like there was going to be a lot of extra clay right? Wrong! As I was making my chain link to go next to the vine, I couldn't get the two to make the tying the knot shape I originally thought of. It was looking too flat and I wasn't even sure how I would connect the two to make the "half" look I was going for. So I just kept making chains and went back to my sketchbook to look at new ideas.Whatever my idea was I knew I was going to need a lot of chains, so I kept up the tedious process while my brain went back to work to what piece I was actually going to make.

 So I kept thinking and thinking and one thing that I like was the idea of having a tree and chains juxaposed together. However, I couldn't quite visualize construction for it so I kept thinking.  I wanted to something with a tree or with twigs for one of my concentration pieces; so I also thought of nest piece. I loved it so much it actually became my next concentration piece. For my chain piece, I ended up choosing to juxapose the chains with a rock. To a certain extent, I view chains as "the rock" of industry--sort of like its foundation. 

The construction of the rock went incredibly fast for me. I was actually able to finish it during one block period. I didn't think too much about it and just jumped right in, starting with adding clay and pushing it outwards. I indented some parts, giving it more deminsions, and also used a loop tool to thin out the structure. Wetting it all with a wet brush, it was quickly smoothed and I went on to making more chains.

I would just like to say thank god we had our first Saturday studio when I was working on this project. I spent literally every spare second working on them: Lauren and I jamming out before practice, before games, and during lunch while we each worked on our pieces. However, nothing is as productive as a Saturday studio. Not only is the construction of the chains tedious, they can be very delicate. I struggled with them being too dry and I struggled with them being too wet when I was trying to work on them throughout the week. I often had to scrap the ones I made the day because I couldn't keep them soft enough to be flexible but hard enough to maintain their shape. By working on them for a whole day, I was able to kick them out and finish the entire piece.

As you can see, I attached the chains at the top and draped them in a way that would mimic a rock structure. Also, back when I created the rock I made sure to smooth the inside, as you can see through the chains to the inside of the rock. When I first started to drape the chains, I had them supported by clay chunks but the chains began to stick to the clay chucks. I was worried the clay would dry together that I wouldn't be able to separate the pieces without ripping the chains. That kinda terrified me so I went back and used newspaper to structure it instead. Also the beautiful thing about the Saturday studio was that we had plenty of snacks!

Reflection:
I changed my mind so much but it ended up being worth it. I felt I had a lot of artistic development as to what my vision was and what steps it would take. I experimented a lot and only stopped when I had reached an idea I couldn't bear to part with. I'm really happy with how my rock piece turned, even though it's nothing like my original vision of the knot. It's interesting how the creative process works sometimes.

Concentration #4

            On a roll after my success with the found objects sculpture, I was excited to get started on my next concentration piece. I was able to do a lot of thinking about my concentration when we were working on the found object sculpture and came up with quite a few concentration ideas. I decided to get started on the one that I really was envisioning and feeling really excited about: a seedpod and pipe piece. I also decided to embrace the earthy darkness of the seedpod by choosing to use low fire red clay. I liked red clay a lot when I was on the wheel and thought it would fit well for this piece as well as spice things up a little bit.

The beautiful inside of the red clay bag!

For the shape of the pod, I was thinking of half a cocoa bean pod. It wasn't until I looked up seedpod I realized there was so many different kinds. Look at how many different kinds there are! Isn't that so cool?!?!

This is a cocoa bean pod: what I used as my shape.

I rolled a slab and got started making my shape for the seed pod. It went surprisingly fast to form. I had the edges a little waved to give it more dimension and made sure that the stem was a little curved. I intially started with the idea of a wavy sort of inside for the pod part, using coils. When I got a fair amout in to really see how the inside of the pod was starting to look, I realized it was looking more like the texture of brain coral than an actual seed pod.

So I scraped it out and started anew. Mrs. Ferguson had a great technique that was able to fit more of the seedpod look I was going for. To start, form a circular ball, and then push in with your fingers to create indents while also pushing the clay outwards. I also found it helpful to throw it against the table to have the top flatter so it would look like the seedpod had been cut open. I also made sure to add clay underneath each individual "pod" so that they would all be at the same height. That was something I had overlooked with brain-coral technique.

Finished with the pod part, I started making the pipes, which would look like they were emerging out of the seedpod. I used the extruder to make the basic cylinder shape. I wanted to have a variety of pipes emerging: different heights, different thicknesses, and some pipes straight some pipes bent. I used the end of a needle tool to get the indentation of the pipes, and also choose to create the binding part of the pipes for some of them. After I was finished constructing, remembering the roughness of my last concentration piece, I spent a lot of time cleaning up the piece with a watered brush.

After firing:

Reflection:
I loved the way this piece turned out! Although the pipes were incorporated into the pod as opposed to being a seperate object, I think it worked really well together. I'm glad I spent the time to really clean it up before the firing and accepting a messy construction as oppossed to trying to clean up the piece after each step.

Found Objects Sculpture: the beginning of changing my mind for everything

                Not quite ready for another concentration piece, It was nice to go back to a Breadth piece. Embracing nature, we went out on a scavenger hunt to find interesting things in nature. Making a pack with ourselves, the four of us agreed to challenge ourselves beyond the bird sculptures we saw as examples. We let loose and grabbed anything that seemed to grab our attention. I personally had a lot of fun getting dirty and poking around at things--unearthing anything that might be useful. It amazing the weird sort of stuff you can find around the lake. We saw a tire, a ton of lunchboxes, an interesting deflated orange ball that I grabbed for later, and gathered up various branches, twigs, and leaves. When we got back to the room we went through Mrs. Ferguson's box of things and also found a lot of interesting metal objects.

As the title suggests, I changed my mind quite a few times as to what sort of animal I was going to construct. I started with the orange deflated ball as my original inspiration as got started on an exciting idea of a lion fish. I was trying to wrap thin branches around the ball to act as the stripes, but the kept falling apart and I couldn't figure out how I was going to do the tale so I started over.

Idea number two was a seahorse. I really liked the corally-ness and delicacy of this seahorse and was able to start with a little more vigour. There was these really flexible branches I had found from a bush/berry sort of plant that allowed me to get the base of some of the curves. This was what it was starting to look like:

After talking with Mrs. Ferguson about my seahorse, I realized it would be better to switch to the more iconic seahorse. Although the other seahorse had it's charm, it was a little difficult to recognize what it was. So the final idea was modified to the traditional seahorse. This was my reference:

And this served as my inspiration( also being helpful to look at the seahorse as being made of objects,and what made it iconic: namely the curling tale, s-shaped body, and snout):

So I revisited the found object bin, gathered up more of the pine needles for bulk, and was a hot-gluing machine. I found a metal screw and washer that I loved as the snout and only had to modify the other seahorse structure a little bit to serve as my base. I used a twig for the shape of the head and was able to wrap it in twine for a little bit of bulk. I added some parts of a pine-cone and then went to work attaching the piece of work to a black base, as the piece was unable to stand upright by itself. It was a little difficult, and I actually ended up having to reattach some parts of the body, as the had fallen off while I was attaching the piece to the supporting pole. I added a little bit of plant life to make it seem it was actually floating in the ocean, and viola-it was done!

Reflection:

I'm so glad Maria told me that if I'm not liking my piece to change it. I was really getting in a rut with the lionfish, and as soon as I changed it I was able to get a lot of progress. Although I did have to tweak the seahorse idea, I found I liked it a lot better than where the lionfish was headed. I realized it's ok for my ideas to evolve when my original concept wasn't working out, because otherwise I would not be making my best work and would simple be settling. This probably ended up being my favorite breadth piece, and I loved the idea of using natural objects. Bonus: I didn't end up burning myself with the hot glue as much as before!

Concentration #3

            Ever since I was young I have always like acorns. Not only do the presence of them remind me of fall, one of my favorite seasons, but they have many great second grade memories asociated with them. On the playground, my friend and I would gather them up in piles for the squirels and have rummage sales with the playground equitment--forcing people to trade in twenty acorns in exchange for a jump role. We used those precious acrons as a form of currency, and to me they have always existed as the underrated "jewels" of nature. With that thought in mind, I decided to have the acorn actually juxaposed to jewel and began my third concentration piece

Getting started on the piece I went to the wheel!! Yay!! It had been awhile since working on the wheel and it was nice to revisit its soothing rythm. I started by created a bowl using AW hi-fire and also created a lid. Im not 100% sure but I think this was the first time I built a lid on the wheel instead of handbuilding. I added a stem, etched in a little texture on top, and was pretty much done with the acorn side. Then I started the jewel side. My original thought was to handbuild half of the jewel as a classic diamond(very iconic), but I instead decided to use the original form and go for more of a gem look.  I used a metal rib and Mrs. Ferguson helped show me how the make the facets. I had a hard time getting the angles right for the facets and also had to repress my urge for smoothing things out because I lost some of the lines that way.

Here's what it looks like after firing:

Reflection:

I'm not sure how I feel about the lid as part of the gem piece but Im hoping to give it more of a faceted look with my glazing. I think part of the reason I've been slow to update this piece is just because I've been avoiding it a little bit. It didn't quite turn out how I had initially envisioned it to be, but I got re-inspired last night while I was looking up some glazing ideas on Pinterest. Im still a little worried that this piece isn't complex enough for concentration submission, but Im feeling a lot better about it now that I have more of a concrete plan for the glazing. Im glazing the acorn like an acorn, using various shades of brown, but Im thinking of going with emerald color scheme.
Here's a sneak peek at what Im looking at:

Multiples and Modules Project

            I did a bit of brain storming for my multiples and modules project for the actual object, and I came back to one of my favorite things: CARDS!!!! First a little background: I adore cards. I love playing with them, I have a deck always with me, and I even wrote about them in my college essay. Not only do I collect cards from the places I visit, they have a certain attraction to them. Only being 52 pieces of paper and providing hours of varied entertainment, cards themselves deserve mad props for encouraging such creativity. 

                  I had a hard time figuring out what over shape I wanted it to be. I drew in my sketchbook and was playing with various forms of squares, and lying on top of one another but I ended up decided to do a cube. I didn't completely fill it in, but I did leave it more as suggesting line. To make up the line of my cube, I cut each individual card into thirds. I folded each one up into a triangle shape, but so that you could still see behind the card. I then-using a ton of hot gule- glued each individual triangle to each other,staggering them as you go of course, to form the individual lines. I had two different colors for my deck of cards, both blue and red, and kinda layered/mixed them together. For construction, I created a simple square first. It was actually kinda hard to get it to balance on itself without falling over, beacause there were never two flat"triangles" next to each other to rest on for balace. I then created a second cube, and before completely gluing it together put it across the already completed square and finished the piece by glueing the two together.

Reflection:

 Because it took me a while to get my idea completely concrete I ended up taking the piece home to finish. The triangles took me much longer than I expected, and ended up being the most tedious process. I also had a little difficult of a time keeping the piece clean looking without having the hot glue bend the shape of the card because of the heat, or the triangle not sticking together because the glue wasn't hot enough. So I defintley played around a lot with the temperature. Halfway through my project I had to stop and take apart part of the first square, as I had made it on much too big of a scale. I think the biggest thing I learned was it's ok to experiment and fall in love with an idea, but don't be overly ambitious. I wanted to make a bigger piece because I thought it would look cooler, but time constraints made me size down and the piece ended up looking a lot nicer with the smaller size. I guess sometimes I want to complicate and make things harder than they actually have to be. All in all it was a fun-but slightly painful because of burning myself-experience, and I liked the way the piece turned out!

Concentration #3 and Multiples & Modules Project:MAYDAY MAYDAY!!!

Unfortunately technology hates me sometimes(correction: all of the time), and I cannot seem able to find the progress photos of the these projects. I spent an hour or two yesterday searching in my google drive and trying to download to see if any photos were hiding from my third concentration piece, and I spent more hours this morning trying to see if I could have possible taken photos of the multiples and modules project when I took it home to work on. All the photos seemed to have disappeared into a black hole so I will provide finished photos and a description of each in my next posts. On the brightside my dad was able to fix my computer's issues with connecting to the internet!