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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Daily Mini Sculpture Project: missing days

Somehow I missed a day or two last week. The student show opened at the Larson Gallery on Tuesday. Saturday I did a raku firing with my clay students all morning (and into the afternoon--they were motivated and did not want to stop). Next week is the last week of the quarter. And my daughter got sick after the raku firing. Am I making excuses?

I made one piece during the week.

I made this one while watching TV with the family.


The next three I finished on Sunday after recovering from the firing and after the sick kid felt better.


I bought some shells to use to replace some shell sprigs that are missing somewhere in the collections of stuff in my home studio or my work studio locker. The new shells came in a cheap bag that was apparently glued or epoxied shut. The adhesive got all over several of the shells and stuck them together. I used the stuck shells to impress the surface of this piece while my daughter sorted the rest of the shells.

Some sprigs and sprig pieces my daughter made after sorting the rest of the shells.


During the week, even though I didn't make much, I kept taking inspiration hints for the project. I got a series of dud inspirations like "tiny" and "nature" and something the size of a dollar. On a basic level these are easy to do but I don't feel very satisfied with my creative response to these hints. Distracted, I guess, and not very excited about the hints. But I suppose using shells is nature and all my stuff is tiny and roughly the size of a dollar. I made some stuff anyway.

My students keep asking about using glass as part of glaze. The problem with glass is that by itself it will melt but not fuse to the clay. Glazes are made of clay and silica. The silica forms glass and the clay causes the glass to stick to the fired clay. However, I haven't personally played with melting glass in the kiln, so this piece has indents into which I plan to put pieces of glass to melt. Gravity and the irregular shape should (maybe) hold the glass in after firing. Or else the glass will twist out of the hole and maintain its shape.


This piece was the last of three I made Sunday evening. 



Monday while my daughter played in the sandbox, I used acorn shells and other tree droppings for this guy.

the book's hint for today was "a love story in 10 words" but since I wasn't going to write (its not really the parameters of my project), I created this guy which I meant to suggest the curved head of a swan. I was picturing the heart that is created in by the curving necks of two swans. I suppose it makes more sense with two of them, but I was thinking the love story didn't end happily. I kept thinking what the love story would look like if I dropped the piece while still wet.

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