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.