Somehow I ended up with a Friday with nothing planned. With Christmas over, my extended family back in Wisconsin and New Hampshire and Seattle and my classwork prepared for the start of the quarter next week, I didn't NEED to do anything right away. My work is mostly installed for Yakima River Diaries at Central and I made plans to go up with more work on Saturday. Friday became a bonus day for me (shh, don't tell anyone). I decided to spend the day how I wanted to, finishing work from summers ago while watching a Bones marathon on Netflix.
I have a box in my studio that was completely ignored all summer and all year. I believe I packed it in 2012, but it may have been 2011. It has cobwebs on top. I can barely remember some of the work, like this piece below, and I don't remember when it was all made.
The underglaze application on this piece does not please me. As I covered more with mulberry paper, I wanted to alter even the colors on the interior pieces. |
The pieces I chose to work on this time around were ones that I wanted to put mulberry paper on. The last was one I had always intended to put paper on. I made it this summer and was looking for the right paper (thanks Mom and Dad). Several pieces in the box had glaze flaws that I wanted to cover. The pod above one had an epoxy seam I wanted to cover as well as some sub-par glazing.
I think the mulberry paper adds an interesting textural contrast to the hard ceramic and shiny glaze, but I have only relatively recently begun planning its use while I build. Most of the work in the box predates my conscious incorporation of mulberry paper and other materials into the design from the beginning.
I have organized the scraps by color groups in these boxes. It feels better than scraps wadded up in a shoe box. |
I used four different types of purple paper scraps from my Christmas gift. |
Actually, I think part of the appeal of the applied mulberry paper is the variety that comes from the handmade paper. The paper is textured and has longer, thicker or different colored fibers visible within the paper. It would be terrible paper for writing evenly with in, but it is interesting to look at. It seems more natural in a way that, I think, highlights the almost-natural look of my forms.
The opposite is true, too. Not all the paper I have has as much variation. In one lidded box I covered entirely in light blue scraps, I am disappointed with how uniform the surface appears. The box suffers the triple problem of having more uniform paper, more transparent paper, and a large surface to cover. I ended up layering the mulberry two or three times but have lost most of the minimal fiber variation in the process. I am considering another approach to add some variation. My daughter has suggested I paint pink lines on the surface, but I may not take her advice in this instance.
These blue scraps are nice, but make the box look oddly like a fuzzy cloud. I'm not sure this piece is finished. |
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