Solid Built Portraits & Snow Days

Sully from Monsters Inc, sculpture by Jaxx Brown. On critique day Jaxx's hand hurt from applying the fur texture the night before.

My Hand-building class recently finished their solid portraits. For the second year in a row, the flipped hand-building class solid built projects have been really successful. This year, the students had an extra challenge added to their project: snow days.

The snow has been beautiful, but also bizarrely disruptive (picture of snowflakes on my car).

During February Yakima Valley College had an unprecedented three class days, two weekend days, and one evening where the campus was canceled because of snow. We had something like 30 inches of snow and at least once we officially had blizzard conditions. Our typical average snowfall is only 2-3 inches for February. If anyone was wondering, this IS what climate change looks like: 

Isabella Johnson's dog was one of the sculptures in pieces on Wednesday. That, combined with the thin legs and complex fur (really the first is excellent!) made me very concerned about this piece.

Students in Hand-building only lost one actual day of class time, but they also lost two full work days, both at inconvenient times. The first snow day cancellation came on a Tuesday. The day before I had told the students they needed to have their solid built sculptures dried to leather-hard on the surface so that we could cut them apart during class on Wednesday. Usually this would be achieved by leaving the sculptures uncovered from Tuesday afternoon until class time on Wednesday morning.

Raquelline Llaguno redid the eyes and mouth each 3-5 times on this sculpture of her brother. Each time the eyes and mouth got better and better. I would love to see what she'd do with 3 more days. 

Since they couldn't come on campus on Tuesday, about half of the sculptures weren't ready on Wednesday. Luckily no students had left their work uncovered Monday afternoon with the plan to cover it again on Tuesday (because that would be too dry). Unfortunately some students were planning to work on their projects during the day Tuesday or the previous evening. A number of people left campus earlier than planned on Monday because of the snow.

Malea Esqueda took on a seriously challenging standing form. This could have broken or cracked in so many different ways just because of where the weight and balance are positioned.

On Wednesday, we had to adjust our plans. Some students were on track because they had taken care of drying on Monday. Others were a day behind. On Friday some students had their pieces hollowed out and put back together, but others had their sculptures in pieces. I instructed those students to keep the work tightly covered over the weekend with the plan that we'd have everything put back together on Monday. That weekend was the start of the blizzard, and campus was closed again on Monday and Tuesday. 

Samantha Reynolds didn't want to finish the face, but eventually pushed herself to do so. Her attachments of the thin slabbed sections was careful and patient.  

I was pretty worried on Tuesday that we'd show up on Wednesday to a room full of bone dry pieces too dry to put together. I was pleasantly surprised, then, when we came in Wednesday morning to find that everything was wet enough to put back together safely.

Samantha Sugihara chose an expressive position for this portrait of her daughter.  The thin arms and hands worried me, but not only did this not crack during drying, it was dried and is the first solid sculpture to come out of the bisque firing.

All the students ended up getting their sculptures put back together in time for the critique at the end of the week. All the pieces were in one piece* for the critique. Of course several pieces were not as "finished" as the students had intended. Some surfaces were a little rougher or simpler than originally planned, but with only 10 weeks of class time, we didn't really have any room to absorb three missed days. During critique, I often write some prompts up on the board for students to discuss. This time I asked "What would have done differently with 3 extra work days?"

*All the sculptures were in one piece except for this standing dog sculpture. The artist, Isabella Johnson, was working on the sculpture when I realized we'd better measure the length. With the tail attached, the dog would have been too long for our electric kilns. Isabella ended up keeping the tail separate and we have plans to attach it later with epoxy.

I was impressed with the amount of effort and patience the students exhibited for this project. Most of the students were disappointed that they had lost time, but they all seemed to adjust to the disruption fairly well. We had a few pieces with minor cracks, two in the base and a few on features, but so far I haven't seen any serious structural cracks. Last quarter, my Intro to Clay class had some real struggles with cracking, mostly because they didn't do any work outside of class time. A number of sculptures were riddled with structural cracks caused by trying to attach dry clay to wet clay or dry clay to dry clay.

Jennifer Martinez chose to create a portrait of a mask wearing character from a parade in Mexico. I've very unfortunately forgotten the name of this subject, so I'll have to ask her again on Monday.

This quarter's class is a delight. I often find that students who work hard have a ripple effect through the entire class. Students observe their classmates coming in after class, working hard, and being successful, and it influenced them to work hard as well. A bit of a competition gets started in the classroom and students also begin to share recommendations about techniques or ways to improve.

Ivy Shearer created a standing portrait of a muppet from The Dark Crystal, whose name I've also forgotten. Ivy's sculpture broke into more pieces than intended during the hollowing out process, but she patiently put it all back together a did some major repairs before critique,

Most of the sculptures for this class have not yet been fired so it is possible that some cracks will develop or we will discover that a piece was left too thick, risking explosions in the kiln due to hidden moisture. However, I was able to feel most of the pieces of most sculptures this quarter, so I am fairly confident that nothing very thick is hidden in any of the sculptures.

"Big Magic" & Coincidence

A few weeks ago I wrote about "Those Times When I Can't Get Motivated." When I shared this post, several friends commented on it in ways that felt supportive and helped me feel better about my slump. One of these commenters suggested I should read Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic. The person who suggested it, Cheryl Hahn, is an amazing artist and someone I respect both as a person and as an artist, so I put the book on my library hold list.

The Cheryl Hahn painting in my dining room.

And then, while I was doing the dishes or something boring, I decided to catch up on some episodes of By the Book, a hilarious podcast about self-help books that I've been listening to on and off for most of a year. I don't actually like self-help books, but I enjoy the podcast. Anyway, the book they were doing was Gilbert's Big Magic. What?

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

At the time I listened to By the Book's take on Big Magic, I hadn't read it and had only just heard of it, but now I know that, according to Gilbert, the coincidence of the personal recommendation followed closely by the book's appearance in my podcast feed is, basically, "big magic."

The funny thing is, the way By the Book described Big Magic made me want to run from it. I hadn't read the subtitle, "Creative Living Beyond Fear" and that combined with it being pegged as a "self-help" book made it sound like something I would not enjoy. It sounded sappy, cheesy, and like something that's been done, even though the By the Book ladies both ended up recommending it.

By the Book Podcast

By now my library hold had come in, but I still didn't get started reading it immediately. It didn't sound like fun. But, since Cheryl had recommended it, I gave it a try. I thought I'd speed read through it and see if it was worth anything. And I did speed through the first part, but then I started getting tripped up on coincidence.

This past Thursday was advising day and among many, many conversations about which courses are required for the AA, I had a really exciting conversation with a student about the feasibility of being an artist or, specifically someone who makes things with their hands. I basically told this student that if they really wanted to "make stuff" in their life, they could "make-up" the jobs that went along with it. I did a bunch of that in the years before and during my graduate school career, proposing art classes that didn't previously exist to city park and rec programs, and being paid only if the classes filled, teaching computers to senior citizens in one of those city programs (most surprisingly difficult class I ever taught), and selling my "boxes" and fountains at all manner of arts and crafts fairs.

the fountains were really a blast to make, a pain to set up each time, but overall lots of fun

Just after having this conversation with the student, I'm reading this book where Gilbert is basically saying that if you want to "make stuff" in your life, you should just make time to do it, even if it isn't your "real job" and even if it doesn't make you any money. It wasn't exactly the same conversation, because ours had to do with making money and the benefits and challenges of "making stuff" for other people to pay the bills, but it was similar. And it resonated, as did the remainder of the book, with me about why we make art.

No Artist Left Behind: The Janet Essley Story from Peter Monahan on Vimeo.

Around this time another coincidence of sentiment showed up in my life. One of my colleagues, Peter Monahan, is both a Spanish teacher and a filmmaker. He shared with me this video he had made about Janet Essley, an artist and educator in the Washington/Oregon area. The video is short, so definitely watch it. In the video, the artist talks about needing to make art, even though it isn't how she makes a living.

By this time I was really getting excited about Big Magic, the book and the stories within. Some pieces of it are a little woo-woo, like I'd rather call them coincidences or even stuff that reaffirms what I think is important, whereas Gilbert gives inspiration and creativity a kind of agency of its own. It reminded me of Marie Kondo thanking inanimate objects for their service. But I really enjoyed Gilbert's light hearted approach to both the book and "living a creative life."

Another thing mentioned in the book was that if you don't feel inspired, just follow your curiosity, even if its barely there. I've been spending a bunch of time in the the last few weeks drawing and coloring complex Valentine's Day cards with my daughter for her classmates. They are weirdly fun and relaxing to draw and color. 

She recommends taking risks, doing the work, following what seems like a random tangent in the work and not asking for any results in return: "Sometimes I think that the difference between a tormented creative life and a tranquil creative life is nothing more than the difference between the word awful and the word interesting." Gilbert recommends just finding everything interesting. Oh, I failed miserably? How interesting.

Last night when I was finishing up my latest sculpture, I starting thinking about how I might use marks on the surface of my ceramics that are similar in character to the marks in the zentangle-y Valentine's Cards.

The best part of the book is the way Gilbert adds in these stories of "Big Magic" in her life or in the lives of her friends. The stories are funny, and fun, and inspiring (in a not sappy way). She tells the stories so well that I'm not going to try to capture them, because I actually recommend this book very highly, especially to people who want to "live a creative life."

I will relate one story, though; in it Gilbert recounts a situation where she sent in a short story for publication which was rejected with a nice note, then happened to (accidentally) send it in again to the same publication where it was accepted. "I saw it as another example of Big Magic....I saw it as proof that you must never surrender, that no doesn't always mean no."

My summary doesn't do Gilbert's writing justice, but I love the sentiment. This is how I approach improvements to our art program at YVC. A "no" one year might simply be a "not yet" and I tend to ask again when I feel the request will improve our offerings. I got one of these "no"s last week, and the book's reminder was nice, though I'd already put it on my "not yet" pile to be requested again next year.

I'm very glad I read the book. I will recommend it. It probably won't change my life, and the information and sentiments in it weren't exactly brand new to me, but they were a refreshing, joyful, engaging, and funny reminder that maybe I'm approaching this the right way.

Actual Studio Time!

The small sculpture I'm working on right now

I got into the studio last weekend. I can't now remember why, but I had some time in the afternoon on Sunday, so I turned on my studio heater, cleaned my wheel, and threw some pieces.

thrown parts, including the main structure of the piece

This week's snowstorms resulted in canceled school and sports events, so I managed to get back in the studio on at least 3 days during the week and some time on Saturday.

texture in progress

The little push I needed to get going was that I had been asked to bring "something no one has ever seen" to Artebella Gallery in March. I don't know if I'll actually be able to finish and fire this piece, but its worth a try. 

a simplified similar form from a few years ago

The form is a reiteration of my other plantlike bulbous forms. I threw all of the parts because that's a bit faster than hand-building them. I got them together on the weekend, and have been refining the form and adding texture since then.

more thrown parts and a bowl I also made.

I have some ideas that I'd like to try in the studio, but the rest of them really require more mental energy than I can expend right now. The bulk of my mental energy is going into classes and union work right now. My priority was to just get something made, even if it wasn't the thoughtful work that I'd like to do.

holding up one of the parts with a hair spray bottle

The next month or so of studio time (whatever I can squeeze in on weekends and evenings) will be spent finishing this piece and possibly glazing some mugs from summer.

politics mugs in progress

Once I get some serious chunks of studio time, I'd like to work on my political mugs, finishing some sculpture pieces, and working on something else I'm not even confident enough to mention just yet. If I do it, it will be a big departure from what I'm used to and will relate to the political mugs.

this poor sculpture has been incomplete for years now

Politics / Protest Mugs

A screaming Trump with his wall. I like the face, but the wall is boring.

This past summer, when I began working on my 30 pieces in 30 days project, I had originally intended to make three sets of 30 pieces, because, apparently, I like to give myself too much to do. I did finish and display a set of 30 abstract bulbs and a set of 30 politics bulbs, but I wasn't able to finish the mugs.

A (poorly lit) detail shot of my abstract bulbs at Columbia Center for the Arts. As far as I can tell, exhausted me from the summer never even took a decent photograph of the other installation.

The concept I was playing with was the contrast between sides. In the abstract bulbs, I simply created contrasting textures and colors on either sides of some of the bulbs, but for both the political bulbs and the political mugs, the original plan was to create imagery that represented contrasting political perspectives on opposite sides of the same piece.

The opposite side of the "wall" mug. I'm reasonably happy with this side.

If I remember, correctly, I abandoned the reversibility of the bulbs when I realized that some of the more sculptural forms would make the bulbs difficult to hang both ways. The extra depth of the sculpted parts would force the bulbs to hang at a funny angle or not at all. Eschewing the reverse side sculpture also allowed me to close some of the bulb fronts.

I didn't glaze this one yet, in part because I'm less happy with it's opposite side, the Obama "Hope" poster.

But the mugs work as reversibles. The handles are the automatic hook for hanging, and the handle is automatically some distance from the decoration on either side. The depth of a nose won't cause them to hang much differently than they would with a flat surface. Also, the forms are larger, meaning more space for some of the sculpted forms. 

A diagram of two alternate setups for the same mugs, with A side displaying one political perspective and B side another. Each mug has an A and a B side.

I have to admit, the ubiquity of the mug form for a potter, and the fact that people buy mugs, was also part of the appeal. I teach Functional Pottery all year so when I get to the end of the year, I have trouble stepping away from the functional forms. I can't tell if it is just familiarity or if it's a result of the fact that I spend the entire year trying to get students to think critically about form, function, handle shape, rim definition, and surface decoration. After harping on about it all year, I think I need to make the forms I'm bugging them about.

This one has a male dominated side and a gender equity side, but its a little trite and a little boring. It might work ok as a supporting actor for related mugs, but I'm not excited about it. there are some flaws in the glaze on the rim and handle, too.

I abandoned the mugs this summer when I'd made only about 15. I had simply taken on too much work, as I'm wont to do. and I realized that to finish the other two projects, I'd have to drop something. The mugs weren't working as well as the bulbs, so I stopped building and didn't even glaze them. I also knew I'd have to fire the mugs separately. (I was using a cone 6 throwing body and planned to use cone 6 glazes, but the bulbs were done with two different low fire sculpture bodies that I finished with the same low fire glaze.)

The opposite side of the gender equality/inequality mug.

I finished some of the mugs in December in the days I had off between the end of the quarter and our holiday travels. I took the pieces out of the kiln just before we left and mostly wasn't happy. The motifs didn't work as well as I'd initially planned, regardless of color, but I was also unhappy with some of the glazing.

One of the exciting things about the bulbs that I decided to avoid in the mugs is the use of mixed media. If these mugs are functional, they can't have holes, materials that aren't able to be washed, or undercuts that can catch water. The result is more subdued decoration.

I didn't glaze everything. Two pieces had cracked, two were too complicated to finish in a few days and I'd left one blank because I planned to paint the decoration, but I can't now remember what I was planning to do.

The idea for this mug is the two favorite amendments of the two contrasting political parties. The second here and the first, above, but as is, this just looks like guns randomly stuck on a mug. 

I'm still halfway interested in trying to finish the project, but I need dedicated time. The political or protest inspired pieces are simply more taxing mentally than the abstract pieces. Working on the abstract pieces is repetitive and relaxing and the results aren't controversial, so I don't stress about how people will react.

The glaze was either too thin or underfed on this mug. I was too lazy, too, on my glaze application. This one, on its own, probably put me off writing about these for over a month.

With the political pieces, I know I'm going to make someone unhappy if I'm doing what I mean to do, but the worst result is if people don't know what I'm trying to say. I'm afraid I've accomplished that (a lack of clarity) with some of the mugs, and in general the mugs I've finished are, across the board, more disappointing to me than the political bulbs. Some of the mugs simply feel cheesy and/or amateurish.

This one has protestors and placards on both sides. The decoration is ok, but it felt like too much work to glaze it in December. I'm glad I didn't, too, because I'm unhappy with the contrast I got from the commercial celadons in the text mug above. Instead I'll use underglaze like the gender symbol mug earlier.

The pieces I still like the best and that I most enjoyed making are the screaming faces. They're fun to make and they also feel like they capture the mood of the country right now. I've been toying with the idea of making an installation composed exclusively of screaming faces. And really, who doesn't want a screaming mug right now?

These two are my favorites. The screaming person is the opposite side of the screaming Trump above and who even cares what is opposite the birth control, because the color worked well. I used underglaze for both and the color is much more what I want than what I got with the celadons.

I think I will eventually finish the mug pieces. During the year I've got a day job that takes a lot of my mental energy, but in the summer I think it might be worth it to push past the unpleasantness and the failure of some of the mugs to see the whole set installed together. Though I'm disappointed with the current results, I'm not totally over the whole idea.

Those Times When I Can't Get Motivated

In the last few days two people have asked if I'm working on any art projects. Sadly, I haven't been in the studio at all this year. I've been having difficulty getting motivated. This is odd for me. I think I'm usually pretty good about just showing up to the studio, motivation or not.

last year at this time I had work in a Nasty Woman show at Yakima Maker's Space

In fact, I keep telling myself that I just need to get in there. Lying in bed at night, I'll tell myself that tomorrow I'll just go in and clean. Or I'll just go in and take pictures of the work I glazed and fired in December. Or may I'll just coil build something--that shouldn't be too difficult.

Last winter I was making interesting changes to my hand-building class.

But the next day comes and I find that I really need to start the laundry, or clean the kitchen, or grade for class, or go for a walk with friends, and I don't do the studio work. My daughter, too has been highly persuasive. Last quarter I felt that I spent too much time on the weekends and evenings doing class work, so I've made a concerted effort this quarter to limit what school work I do at home.

Instead she and I read, play a game, draw, go for a bike ride (early January was fairly mild in Yakima), or do some other project together. Somehow, though, she often laments that we haven't "done anything" and then I feel guilty about how I've spent my time.

This weekend's activities have included sewing and making Valentines cards with her 4H club.

I'm a worrier. I can find something to worry about with little provocation. Before Christmas I worried about whether everyone would be upset about the presents I got them. I really worried that the Lego set we bought for my nephew without looking at the age recommendation would be too difficult (it wasn't). I worry all the time that I am not doing all I can to make my classes good enough. I worry that I don't exercise enough or I consume too much sugar. I worry that our house is too messy and our diet includes too few vegetables. I worry that I haven't been blogging twice a week though I used to post that often.

And, logically, I am fully aware that all of these are stupid worries. The most important part of Christmas is just seeing folks. My nephew is a perfectly competent Lego builder with a slew of family members happy to help him. I work damn hard on my classes and they're pretty good. The point of exercise is to keep my calm and reduce my impulse to worry and the point of the blog is to help me think through things that are on my mind. We should all probably eat more vegetables.

Or, as Newt Scamander (and a bunch of folks before him) points out, it's stupid to waste energy worrying.

There's a sign in the gym where I workout in the morning that says "if you've stopped being better, you've stopped being good". Which, of course, I interpreted to mean that since I haven't been in my home studio in a meaningful way since July, I am no longer an artist.

What you do everyday day is who you are (that might be an "inspirational" poster in the gym, too, now that I think about it). What I do all everyday is teach, think about teaching, think about our union, read, and hang out with my family. What I don't do everyday (or even every week lately) is make my own clay stuff, or even really think about making my own clay stuff.

I made these mugs this summer and even glazed some of them in December.

I've been trying to find this meme I saw late last year about women feeling exhausted trying to work, raise kids, be financially independent, go to the gym, have a perfect smoky eye, and all the things that seem to be expected of us. (Full disclosure: I've literally never thought about trying to have the perfect smoky eye.) I can't remember the punchline and now I'm wondering if there was one. The thing that resonated is the feeling that we "should" and the feeling that we can't possibly.

I have thought about making the perfect angry eye...in clay.

I recently came across an article about an author, Pat Barker, who says that a writer "must resist the urge to clean." I didn't actually read the article, but I think that's kind of the point, too. There's so many thing to fill my days, and so many things I'd like to do or have done. It seems like a good idea to have a clean house, happy family, healthy lifestyle, make good art, be the best possible teacher, grade submissions quickly, connect individually with all of my students, work out every day, read all the books, do projects with my daughter, attend her games and practices, go to interesting events in town, travel, talk to my husband, see my family more often, and blog regularly about all of it.

But it can't be done. Choices must be made. Having a clean house means taking time away from writing, or making art. (I've been writing this morning, therefore our house isn't clean today.) Making good art means making art everyday or at least a few days every week, which isn't compatible with maintaining a high quality, dynamic, and responsive online class and being an involved parent. I could probably do more of the former if I didn't teach online. But I do. I teach at a college that emphasizes teaching, at the obvious cost of studio time or "research."

As one of my colleagues pointed out the other day, looking at what happens to teaching at some research institutions, I'm where I want to be. But periodically I have to drag myself back through this  reality check about what I have prioritized and why. Looking back through my blog, the last time I wrote about this struggle was almost exactly two years ago. And in 2011 I wrote about having this struggle, and needing to pull myself back after comparing my work and my choices to other artists across the country. In 2012, I did a project aimed at addressing the difficulty of getting into the studio during the academic year.

Balance

If i looked harder, I could probably find more examples of the times I've moaned, or worried, or justified, or taken action to try to address this fundamental struggle. For now, I'll tag this post as "work life balance" and go hang out with my family, or maybe I'll clean the house.

Fifth Grade Clay

Fifth grade "polychrome" bowl

In November and December I did a two-day clay lesson with my daughter's fifth grade class. Since the kids are now 10 and 11 and many of them have done a clay lesson before (just with me, since the school doesn't have art classes AT ALL), I figured this was a good year to do both building and glazing. 

To align with what they're learning in class, I based the clay project on Pueblo pottery, the coil built, burnished and often pit fired pottery of the Pueblo region, including Arizona, New Mexico, and Northwest Mexico. 

finished bowls by three fifth graders

On the first day the kids used fired bowls as pukis or molds for the bottom of their coil built bowls. I used this method because of the connection the Native American tradition, but I regretted it early on.

two bowls with evidence of the ledge from the puki

Many of the students found the pukis distracting and often ended up pushing too hard on their walls both inside and above the edge of the puki. When they did this, they thinned out the bottom so much it became weak and/or created a ledge above the edge of the puki. 

two students decided to decorate the bottom of their wide dishes

Once I realized how many students were struggling, I had the students remove their work from the pukis. Some students were able to work with or without the mold, some had repairs to do once the clay was removed, and some ended up flattening their pieces into wide shapes once out of the mold.

two students with different bowl shapes

On the first day of the lesson, because of a miscommunication that was my fault, I didn't have any student helpers from YVC for the lesson. I usually bring assistants for these lessons and the assistants can give some attention to those who are struggling. This time around students struggled and I wasn't able to get to them or spend as much time with each student.

heart shaped dish, for Daisy

Plenty of students did fine and only one student had piece undergo such damage that it needed to be entirely rebuilt. Lots of students successfully made bowl shapes and a few controlled the shape more than that. One made a heart shaped dish.

wedding vase by my daughter

My daughter had been looking in the books with me the night before and really wanted to make a wedding vase form, so she did. She had talked with me a bit the night before about how to separate the two necks and how to join them. She finished all of it during class and I didn't let her work on it after class.

two dark colored coil built pieces

All of the kids would have benefited by having another hour or two to work. If this were a real art class, they could have practiced, planned, built, and revised. It just goes to show that these kids are sorely missing art classes as part of their elementary school curriculum. One lesson a year doesn't make up for the fact that these kids get to opportunity to learn about art making in different cultures, learn the hand skills that would allow them have control over the clay, or learn about the process and materials used for different techniques. 

some of the more complicated underglaze decorations

Once we brought the clay back to the studio for firing, several of us spent some time fixing a few cracks in the students' work and making adjustments to pieces that were too thick or too thin. I don't like to do this to students' work, but with the time limit the students were only able to do so much and I didn't want their work to explode in the kiln.

triangular patterns and dots inspired by the original images

After the pieces were fired, I brought them back and led a glazing/underglazing lesson. The inspiration this time was San Ildefonso polychrome pottery. I had the students use just two underglaze colors, terra-cotta red and brown. They also had the white clay body that could be incorporated into their designs. Instead of pit firing, I had the students apply a clear glaze over their underglaze decoration and then fired the work again.

the zigzag pattern on the bottom came from the inspiration images

I was able to give the students homework this time. I left my resource books with their teacher and each student got some time to look through the pictures. Based on their observations of the decorations on the pottery, they drew plans for their decoration the week before they actually had the underglazes and the bisque fired pieces.

the strong contrast here works well

Some students closely followed their original designs and some did not. Overall, though, when looking at the whole group's work together, it is easy to see the patterns of lines, zigzags and repeated shapes inspired by the images of Pueblo pottery.