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.