Recent Sculpture: Twisty Chartreucat

Twisty Chartreucat, ceramic with underglaze, 2021

I built this sculpture in spring and finished it this summer. It reminds me of a cat or someone acting shy based on the way it folds back on itself. I was enjoying building twisty forms in spring as a mental break from the teaching and union work I was doing.

the Chartreucat is starting to hide its head/bulb

For this scupture, I wanted thte work to come up and then bend back down so that the "top" bulb was almost lying down on its base. But I wanted to keep space between each element. I didn't want this to look like it had fallen during the firing or that the plant/creature was dead or collapsed.

I love the s-curve of the stem and base here

As with the last twisty sculpture I posted about, I am having fun with how the sculpture looks different, or photographs different depending on how it is positioned. As I said, I think of this piece as shy becuase of the way the yellow bulb is hidden by the stem from a certain angle.

building a twisty form like this is fun, but requires care to make sure the stem is stable enough to support the wet weight being added below as a cantilever

As with the rest of the sculptural forms I built in spring/summer 2021, this one was coil built with my freshly pugged clay. The freshly pugged clay made a significant different, as I mentioned previously, it was warm and soft and just a better mix than when I do it by hand.

the stamps can't fill in all the spaces between sprigs without squishing the sprigs

The surface of the sculpture was decorated with sprigs (little bits of clay pressed into small bisque molds) and stamps. In this case, the stamps filled in the large spaces between sprigs and then I used a stick or ball stylus to add more holes in between and up to the edges of the sprigs.

The surface seems a lot more dense with the added dots between and around the other elements

The stamps won't fit right next to the wet sprigs without squishing them and the sprigs smush the stamps if I put them on in the other order. The ball stylus allows me to add some variety of mark making (I can use larger and smaller balls to make dots of varying sizes) and fills in those spaces.

the chartreuse underglaze looks much brighter after firing or in better lighting

I then treated the surfaces with my typical two color underglaze treatment, which consists of painting on the first layer of both the background and the sprigs, then firing the piece to bisque temperature (low temperature) a second time.

red was added over the chartreuse, blend to orange at a distance

After the second firing, I add a second layer of underglaze, then wipe it incompletely away from the surface so that it highlights both the indents and the areas around the sprigs. In this case, I added a glossy glaze to the entire yellow/red background surface, but left the sprigs unglazed so that they have a velvet/matte surface texture.

the base color looks very different at the bulb wher there is minimal red vs along the base and body where close texture creates more areas for the red to remain

This piece and several other brand new sculptures that I've yet to post about will be on display (and for sale) over Labor Day weekend at my house for the Yakima Artist's Studio Tour on September 4 and 5 from 10-4 and Monday, September 6 from 10-12. You can purchase tickets from me on the day of the tour or beforehand. For more information, check out my blog post about the Tour or Artebella Gallery's Tour page.

The density of both sprigs and background texture changes as one moves "up" the form