Expressive Portrait, Glazed & Finished: Fall 2022

Last week, students in my Winter quarter class started building their solid portraits. I've been pretty busy so far this winter, so I had not gotten around to posting the finished sculptures created by my fall quarter class. 

painted solid portrait by Thai See

The solid built portrait project is probably my favorite hand-building project. I enjoy the format of the class, and the way the students separate into different tools and techniques, then come together for this solid building project. So this project is fun because we are all working together.

Kate Winslet as Clementine (from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) by Thai See

 

I also enjoy it because of the way the students work on this project. Most students use an armature, but they aren't required to do so. However, because the build is solid and fairly large, the first day consists mostly of hitting clay with paddles to make it stick to itself or the armature. It's hard not to enjoy such a physical project.

Charlie from Heartstopper by Amy Matson

I suppose it is also fun for me, because while the students are working hard, pounding on their pieces, making lots of noise and moving lots of clay around, I'm simply walking around, checking in with them, making suggestions, talking about their plans and proportions and the positiong of their armature.

Nien Nunb from Star Wars by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

On the second day of the project, they are cutting, hitting, and still making large changes to their project. Eventually they start to separate and work at different rates, but by the start of the second week or so, by design, they are all ready to cut. And again, that day, I'm walking through, thoroughly enjoying myself, while they are all cutting and hollowing and again making big changes to their projects.

Scream, by Amanda Goodrich, glazed

I never built this way, myself, in undergrad or in graduate school. I never really used an internal armature in my own work before I started teaching either. I've done so since, but I'm not even sure I had made and finished a full-side sculpture like this until my students had already done so in my class.

Scream, by Amanda Goodrich, side

This process is just a bunch of fun for me and the students seem to really enjoy it too, though I know it can also be frustrating--and some of them feel the frustration more than others, of course. Some of the students who feel frustrated with the project are those whose work looks great to me and their classmates, but who have really high expectations of themselves. These students may be bothered that their first portrait project isn't as perfect as they imagine it could be.

Medusa by Valeria Alvarez

Occaionally, I get a student who is so frustrated by the process that they end up disliking the end product. This happens in the throwing class sometimes, too. They expected the class to be easy or pure fun or something, but in the end they found it difficult and that somehow ruined the results for them. I find that both students who struggled and students who didn't appear to struggle can feel this way at the end of the quarter.

Two Geckos by Brooke Mason

Of course there are some students who struggle or dislike the project or their final results because they didn't really put in the time. I didn't really have that happen during most of the quarter this year, but it has happened in the past. 

Two geckos before firing by Brooke Mason

The clay can be unforgiving, breaking or squishing if handled incorrectly or worked on too wet or too dry. Just missing some studio time can result in clay that's too dry and needs to be entirely restarted. This isn't such a big deal on the wheel, most of the time, but it can be a major problem with a hand-building project that took weeks to build.

Dog by Yarelli Sanchez

The work I'm showing in this blog is (mostly) finished work as presented for the final critique. Students in the hand-building class had 5 builds during the quarter and they were required to glaze at least 4 of them. One of the 5 could be painted, the other 4 could be fired in the cone 10 kiln in a reduction or oxidation atmosphere, in the raku or pit firing, or in a low fire kiln. 

Dog by Yarelli Sanchez

Finishing the work mostly meant glazing or painting, and many students used underglazes with glazes. Horsehair raku firing was also an option, though none of the solid portraits ended up being finished with only horsehair raku (one was done with horsehair then re-fired).

Dog by Yarelli Sanchez

I also tell students that they can bring in non-ceramic materials after glazing and firing. This includes paint of course, but could also include epoxy, clear acrylic medium, hair, paper, or any other materials the student wishes to use. In the past students have added a dog collar, rubber, beads, staples and pieces of metal.

Dog by Yarelli Sanchez

This quarter, just two or three students used something besides paint. One added some acrylic medium to increase the shine on her piece after firing. Another added hair to her Gollum. Though Gollum doesn’t have a lot of hair, it makes a real difference. His particular hairstyle reminds me of when my hair was falling out near the beginning of chemo. 

Gollum by Amy Matson

Amy, who created Gollum, actually used her own hair. She shocked her classmate when she cut it off during class, yakima more than she probably needed. Whenever I’ve made sculptures that incorporate hair, I’ve used the fake kind that you can buy in a cheap hairclip—but maybe that’s because I knew I’d eventually lose it all. (Hmm, now I’m wondering why I didn’t save my hair that fell out for use in my future sculpture.

Bantha by Julia Snow

Hair and fur texture make a bit difference in making a sculpture look realistic, stylized, creepy, beautiful, or strange. In the fall, we had some pretty different approaches to hair and fur. Julia's Bantha has these tufts of fur, Yarelli's dog fur varies quite a bit across different parts of the body. Some others focused more on the form than the surface.

Bantha by Julia Snow

I can't wait to share images from this quarter, with student's permission, because we have some very different approaches to surface texture happening. I feel like each class cohort can have a very distinctive feel, energy, or approach. This quarter 6 students from fall are continuing into the Winter quarter, meaning this cohort combines new and continuing students. I've been kind of surprised how different the energy is. The winter group is a good group, they're making work and rising to the challenge of the class, but the humor and perspective is just a little different. It's a little bit difficult to name.

Dog on Pillow by Thunder Morales

I suspect part of the reason it feels so different is simply because half the class is working on different projects than the other. I've got six or seven beginners, doing the same assignments as the fall students, but with sometimes very different personal approaches. Then I've got 4 intermediates working on pretty independent and thus quite varied intermediate projects, and I've got 2 intermediate students who took the beginning class online or while I was on medical leave, which means their experience, background and perspective is pretty different.

Dog on Pillow by Thunder Morales

I'm definitely not complaining. I've been really happy with how the group has worked together even with the different projects. They've now completed two and a half builds, and I'm pretty much always happy when the builds get done. Some of them had to push a bit to meet the last deadline, but that energy (oh no! here comes the deadline!) can yeild some very interesting and surprising results.

Dwight from The Office by Jordan Golob

This week my three clay classes all start glazing. I'm looking foward to seeing what we get for the first firing, but I'm also interested to see how my intermediates approach glazing, having already had one or two quarters of experience prior to this class.

Derek Arneecher's Winifred after the second firing (with underglaze)

Extruded Forms, Glazed & Finished: Fall 2022

Extruded sculpture, horse hair raku fired, by Yarelli Sanchez

An extruder is a tool that forces wet clay through a die to create long tubes or lines of clay in that shape. I have students use this tool on the second day of hand-building class to make mugs. They use a hollow cylinder die to create hollow cylinders which form the walls of the mug. Some students are assigned to the wall extruder, while others roll slabs for the bottom of the mug. Still other students use a small hand held handle extruder to shape uniform handle blanks to attach to the extruded cylinder.

extruded chia pet stonehenge (before chia seed application) by Julia Snow

Later, students are given access to several extruders and lots of dies to create their own sculpture. They can extrude hollow cylinders using the same die they used for the mugs or they can use a smaller hand held extruder (one that looks like a caulk gun) to extrude smaller hollow cylinders. 

Yarelli's sculpture, the rings on top are slices of the extruded cylinders

Once the cylinders are extruded, they can keep them tall like the mug, or cut them down. Yarelli used both tall cylinders and cylinders cut into small rings to create her horsehair raku fired sculpture of towers and chains.

detail of Julia's extruder forms, showing carved texture

Using the large hollow cylinder die, the extrusions can be fairly thick, meaning students may choose to carve into the thick walls of the cylinders to reduce the weight and add decorative texture. To make the walls of a cylinder thinner, students can use a larger interior die or they can stretch out the extrusion by rolling a dowel inside or by manipulating it with their hands. 

extruded hand by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

After the forms are extruded, the clay is still soft, so students can choose to squish, cut or bend the extrusion or attach different extrusions together. Sometimes the extrusions bend or curve as they come out of the extruder. Students can adjust the die placement or hold the extrusion as it comes out to avoid this, or they can embrace the curve as it happens. They can even adjust the die so that these curves are more likely to happen.

Extruded sculpture by Brooke Mason

Carlos combined larger and smaller extruded cylinders to make his hand. He left the fingers more or less as they came out of the extruder, but altered the large extrusion by flattening it to create the palm of the hand. Brooke did perhaps the most altering, using extruded cylinders as the basis of her stacked anemone-like forms, but she used pinch methods to significantly alter the shape of the extrusions.

extruded hand by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

Cylinders aren't the only shapes or forms that can be extruded. Our studio has a bunch of options for solid and hollow extrusions with the 4" diameter extruder and the smaller 1" diameter extruder, but we also have an expansion box that can be used on the 4" wall extruder to stretch out the clay into larger extrusions. Artists can also make their own extruder dies by cutting metal or wood or by printing their own designs. The YVC clay studio just purchased a couple of new 3D printed extruder dies we hope to put to good use this winter.

Extruded Robot by Thai See (@thaiidraws on Instagram)

Students in the fall class used a lot of cylinders, but also a few other forms. Thai used a square hollow die to create the body, head, and legs of her robot and she and several other students extruded coils or solid cylinders that were incorporated into their sculptures.  

Extruded teapot in the style of Ray Bub by Jordan Golob

Some artists, when working with coils, prefer to extrude their coils so they are uniform. Whether rolling coils by hand or setting up and using the extruder is more labor intensive may be up for debate, but I know some folks prefer their coils extruded. Jordan used coils both decoratively and as building elements to create her extruded/coiled blue form above. 

Extruded Robot (back) by Thai See

Both Thai and Jordan used the square hollow extruder for parts of their forms. Thai chose to alter her square leg extrusions to make them narrower where they attached to the body of the robot.

horned and antlered vases by a Fall 2022 student

Lots of people like to use an extruder to create uniform handle shapes, but handles don't show up as often in sculpture. One student, who chose to remain anonymous here, chose to used the handle extruders to create a vareity of different horns and antlers on a set of extruded vases. 

surfer on an extruded wave by Amanda Goodrich

One of the unusual dies I like to see students use is an extruder die that looks like a wiggly line. When students use it, it creates what appears to be a slab with a zigzag built in. Amanda used this slab-like extrusion to create a solid wave of water for her surfer guy. She chose a copper glaze in an oxidation firing which highlights the texture pools at the bottom of the wave with an oceanic color.

Pegasus by Thunder Morales

Thunder's pegasus also utilizes the extruded wave/slab/zigzag form. In the Pegasus's case, the wave makes up the wings. Thunder also used hollow extrusions for the body, legs, and head of the mythical creature. This sort of standing form on 4 legs worries me because the legs can dry faster than the body, resulting in cracks or collapse. 

Pegasus from the front

However, the extruder turned out to be a great tool for this form because the legs and body started hollow and started structurally sound. Thunder was able to focus his time and effort on shaping the face and creating the mane and tail, rather than on balancing the form so it wouldn't fall.

Cats and Coyotes by Amy Matson

Amy's wall hanging sculpture of cats and coyotes includes 3D printed, slabbed, and extruded elements. She used the extruder in the shape of a coyote to extruded most of the tiny creatures walking along the sides of the sculpture. This die has always mystified me a bit, because it only works if you plan to extrude a long tube in this shape, then cut it into lots of flat pieces where you can see the shape. 

Trick Teapot by Amy Matson

Amy's other extruded form was her trick teapot with bamboo. The bamboo decoration, as well as the bamboo handle and spout were made from hollow extrusions, but so was the body of the form, which actually has two containeed sections that we can't see, as their openings are quite small and hidden in the bamboo.

It's often difficult to tell scale in photos on a website, especially ones without references. Amy's teapot is fairly small, more or less regular teapot size, while Thunder's pegasus is fairly large. But the winner as far as scale is certainly Derek's ancient robot relic sculpture.

Ancient Robot by Derek Arneecher

Derek used the extruder to create quite a lot of material. He had a plan going in and pretty much stuck to that plan until it came to the firing. As I explained in a previous post, Derek's sculpture had a fatal flaw, a closed hollow section in the middle, which caused it to explode during the firing. Since it was a large sculpture to begin with, it made a large mess in the kiln, but I was very pleased by how he finished the form after firing, with epoxy and acrylic paint. He chose to highlight the cracks and make them part of the story of this ancient robot form.

Coils, Glazed & Finished: Fall 2022

coil spaghetti and meatballs by Yarelli Sanchez (the meatballs are hollow)

During the first and third project of the quarter in Hand-building, students were split into groups and they either worked with coils and slabs in the first 3 weeks or they worked with the 3D printer and extruder first, then switched later, to use those two techniques for the third project.

student work, coil form with sprayed copper red glaze in reduction

Coil building is the first hand-building technique I remember learning and the technique that I still use the most in my home studio, though in my own work I throw and pinch a lot and sometimes extrude, too. 

other side of the coil piece by anonymous

Coil building, along with pinching, feels to me like the fundamental clay building technique. I'm not sure if that is colored by personal preference or how I learned, but coil building as a technique is one that tends to be relatively easy to manage right away (without a lot of practice), meaning that relatively few students break or collapse their coil builds and have to restart. With slabs and the printer, it isn't particularly unusual to have to scrap the first attempt because the clay was too wet and heavy, or too dry. 

third view of the coil piece by anonymous

Over the years I have had students struggle with coils when they were trying a complex shape or when they were building that dramatic shape too quickly. I remember a student in the old building who kept trying to build an exceedingly wide bowl out of wet coils, but she didn't support the coils as they got wide and didn't let them dry once they started to sag. She wanted to build it all in one go without letting the clay stiffen up a bit before continuing. She may have been adding water to the coils which just made them heavier and more likely to collapse at that angle.

extra small coil piece by anonymous

Most students don't have such a difficult time getting started with coils, but I like to push them out of the comfortable zone. My coil project requirement is tht the work they create needs to be asymmetrical. Coils lend themselves to repetitive layers and subtle changes and the expected form is usually a round bulbous vase shape. But coils are versitile and can be used to create a wide range of forms.

Valeria Alvarez replicated another student's coil avocado from a previous quarter

By asking my students to build an asymmetrical form, they have to come up with an idea that is unexpected. I love this project because it allows so much freedom for the students, both allowing them to explore that freedom, but also forcing them to create something with that freedom (which is sometimes harder than working within tight constraints).

Thai See's crying coil sculpture (find her @Thaiidraws on Istagram) 

With this coil project, the students may choose to leave the coils visible or blend them to create a smooth or to create a base for an alternate surface texture or design. With visible coils, students must score and slip between each layer of coil. They must also take care to roll even, consistent coils, or make the visual decision to have the coils vary in thickness.

Duck with egg by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

With blended coils, the student can skip the scoring and slipping (I always do) and simply squish the wet clay together as they build. Blending coils like this is similar to making pinch pots, but you are constantly adding on more clay.

coil duck with egg by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

This quarter student approaches to this project were particularly diverse. Carlos started building his duck from about where the waist is currently. The legs were much different and the duck was sitting. Partway through the build, however, he decided to take off the old legs and base and start building new legs. 

This piece is entirely coil built and about 20" tall.

Building a standing form with just two legs is a bit risky because two small bases is less stable than three. I was worried, but Carlos made his duck/human feet large and he balanced the big arms and egg with a similarly impressive duck butt and tail. I was pretty surprised how well the duck stands on its own.

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, duck (behind)

Carlos attached the legs and feet to the body late in the process, but because of his careful planning and control of drying, everything attached well and the build was stable. Carlos kept his duck covered in plastic (and a warning not to touch) until critique, so he had kind of a grand reveal moment during that class.

Thai See, coil sculpture (side)

Thai was another student who rebuilt and revised her sculpture. In her case, she built the face first, and kept changing her mind about how she wanted the rest of the structure to be. In the end, she built a kind of body/shell for the face, with the unexpected additions of worm coming out the one side.

coil kracken by Brooke Mason

A couple of students, Brooke and Yarelli, treated coils as both building tools (the assignment) and independent parts of the sculpture. I worry sometimes when students decide to do this because it can be risky. In Brooke's case, the little coils that twist and turn everywhich way are less supported and strong than coils that are attached to one another. These coils can break during drying or when loading or handling before glazing.

side view of the "broken" spaghetti bowl by Yarelli Sanchez

In Yarelli's case, I was worried about both the thickness of the spaghetti piled inside the bowl and how well attached each of those coils is to it's neighbors. I was actually a bit surprised that the foot or the bottom of the bowl didn't explode during firing, but Yarelli explained how careful she was during building. 

Amanda Goodrich's shark eating a squid

Amanda's shark eating a squid sculpture came together with a surprise near the end. I saw her building on the shark body, but it seemed like I turned away for a moment, then suddenly there was a squid, already built, in the shark's mouth. 

Amanda's contrasting glaze is very helpful for distinguishing the shark from its snack

Now that I'm looking at them together (remember, students didn't all make the coil projects at the same time), I realize how many sea creatures we had this quarter. Thunder started us off with an abstracted blue and green octopus sculpture. In contrast to Amanda's squid and Brooke's kracken, the octopus sculpture focuses on the head and leaves out most of the legs.

I think Thunder was telling us about how the legs were short because it was a baby. Thunder used a mix of underglazes for his color, but, unfortunately the glaze didn't fully adhere to the underglaze and he had a couple of dry spots where it crawled away.

Octopus by Thunder Morales

Students mostly used glaze or underglaze plus glaze in the high fire kiln for their coil sculptures. Yarelli and Julia were the only exceptions. Yarelli used underglazes in a low firing for her spaghetti. She sprayed on her glazes and used tape as a resist to keep the overspray off of the broken part of the wall that had apparently fallen into the spaghetti.

Teapot by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

Brooke and Thunder also used underglazes, but in the high fire kiln. Anonymous used the sprayer to apply a high temperature glaze to their large sculpture and probably dipped the small vase. I believe everyone else painted on their high temperature glazes. I remember one day when the counter in the glazing room was surrounded by students with paintbrushes.

Coil form (after raku tragedy) by Julia Snow

Julia chose to put her coil form in the raku firing and use horse hair to decorate the piece. It actually survived the trip from the raku kiln to the shelf (via tongs) just fine, and I don't remember seeing any cracks on the piece during the critique. After critique, Julia left the work on the table. On the day of the thrower's critique, I started to worry that she wouldn't be back to move her stuff, so I moved it.

Coil form base, Julia Snow

Unfotunately for me, I lifted this piece by grabbing just one of the branch shapes. As I moved it to the cart, with someone else in my other hand, the bottom detatched itself from the part I was holding and the whole thing went crashing to the ground. Even worse, Julia walked in just a few minutes later to move her stuff.

The part I was holding when it broke

She took pictures of the work in its broken state. I'm not sure if she plans to repair it or not. The raku firing process can be stressful, and unfortuantely some cracks aren't visible (or didn't get noticed) until something else strains them. In this case, it was the weight of the sculpture itself, pulling against the crack.