Pitcher Plants Plans

my pitcher plant sculpture and the live inspiration

I recently acquired a hanging pitcher plant for my studio. I've always liked the form of these plants. In fact I made sculptures based on this form back in graduate school.

throwing the pitcher plant form

  

I've been thinking about a couple of different pitcher plant based sculptures this summer and I finally had the time to try one of them out. I threw the basic shape on the wheel, then altered it with coils and ribs.

pitcher plant forms drying off the wheel

My plan is for the pitcher plant forms to hang down from a central base like the live plants hang from their basket. I removed the spokes from a bike wheel rim and plan to bend them to be the stalks or stems of the ceramic plants.

   

ceramic base and bike hub with spokes

I made about seven of these pitcher plant forms, but on one I forgot which way the stem is supposed to go, so it comes out of the front instead of the back. I also threw the pieces in one day without thinking as far ahead as I needed to, so all seven are roughly the same size. I probably should have some smaller pitcher plants for the finished sculpture.

pitcher plant in progress with spoke

As my daughter kept pointing out, I might also make some that are more closed on the top like those in my studio, though she might be noticing the ones that seem to be dying.

pitcher plants in progress

I didn't think a great deal about the interiors of these plants, though they are open. In previous iterations of this form, I had things coming out of the interior, but with these I stayed closer to the original plant form (if not the original surface).

bisque fired pitchers

Fitting a new batch of fired work

I fired some more pieces this weekend, including the first base for a pitcher plant piece. The bike fork fits well into and onto the base. The short leg of the fork is damaged (thus it is short) and I may alter the base because of the metal is bent, but the changes aren't absolutely necessary.

bike fork in place (temporarily) on base

Unfortunately, the other area of the base, where I planned to anchor a bike part, appears to have warped or may have been measured incorrectly. I tested the fired fit with a different gear stack than the one I used originally, but I believe the interiors of this type of gear stack are all the same. The original gear stack is hiding in my messy studio somewhere.

gear held in place on wet clay

I can't tell from the wet clay pictures if I am holding the gear in place because it doesn't fit or because it is too heavy for the wet clay. The wet clay should shrink during drying and firing, allowing for about 10% reduction in the size of the piece after firing. A piece that almost fits wet should shrink to fit after firing, though I can't tell if that happened here.

different gear held in place on fired clay (because it won't fit)

The clay attachment is no longer perfectly round, an error I seem to be encountering with some regularity. The piece may have warped during drying or firing--or, again, I might have not accounted for shrinkage very well. Regardless, I should plan for less shrinkage on small elements like this in the future.

the broken bike fork pictured here illustrates my intent, even if I don't plan to use this particular part

I can proceed with the result of this particular error in several ways. If I absolutely want to maintain the original design, I could grind down the exterior of the clay attachment or the interior of the bike part to make up for the small size discrepancy. Or, I could put something inside the attachment which also goes inside the gear. This places the gear farther from the base itself, but still attached in a similar way to the original plan.

broken bike fork holding up the gear that wouldn't fit on its own

Another option is to revise the design, replacing the intended gear with a different, wider gear and a clay end cap. Or I could replace the gears with some other element all together. 

large end cap holding on larger gear

I could attach an old faucet handle

Of course, I don't have to make all these decisions quite yet. My plan is to build the bulk of the work early in my sabbatical, then glaze everything at once, and then put everything together after glazing. If I attach all the bike parts after all the clay parts have been made, I can trade some of the pieces between one sculpture and another. Though this approach is foreign to a pottery, it seems the most reasonable approach for this group of works. I expect to collect some more bike parts before the project is complete. I expect that I will get more of what I already have (more gears, more chains, more of certain small parts), which means I will be able to choose between similar parts later on and may find a slightly larger gear set or a slightly different fit.
 

one of the second batches of pitcher plants, testing fit on the bike fork