Extruded Forms, Glazed & Finished: Fall 2022

Extruded sculpture, horse hair raku fired, by Yarelli Sanchez

An extruder is a tool that forces wet clay through a die to create long tubes or lines of clay in that shape. I have students use this tool on the second day of hand-building class to make mugs. They use a hollow cylinder die to create hollow cylinders which form the walls of the mug. Some students are assigned to the wall extruder, while others roll slabs for the bottom of the mug. Still other students use a small hand held handle extruder to shape uniform handle blanks to attach to the extruded cylinder.

extruded chia pet stonehenge (before chia seed application) by Julia Snow

Later, students are given access to several extruders and lots of dies to create their own sculpture. They can extrude hollow cylinders using the same die they used for the mugs or they can use a smaller hand held extruder (one that looks like a caulk gun) to extrude smaller hollow cylinders. 

Yarelli's sculpture, the rings on top are slices of the extruded cylinders

Once the cylinders are extruded, they can keep them tall like the mug, or cut them down. Yarelli used both tall cylinders and cylinders cut into small rings to create her horsehair raku fired sculpture of towers and chains.

detail of Julia's extruder forms, showing carved texture

Using the large hollow cylinder die, the extrusions can be fairly thick, meaning students may choose to carve into the thick walls of the cylinders to reduce the weight and add decorative texture. To make the walls of a cylinder thinner, students can use a larger interior die or they can stretch out the extrusion by rolling a dowel inside or by manipulating it with their hands. 

extruded hand by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

After the forms are extruded, the clay is still soft, so students can choose to squish, cut or bend the extrusion or attach different extrusions together. Sometimes the extrusions bend or curve as they come out of the extruder. Students can adjust the die placement or hold the extrusion as it comes out to avoid this, or they can embrace the curve as it happens. They can even adjust the die so that these curves are more likely to happen.

Extruded sculpture by Brooke Mason

Carlos combined larger and smaller extruded cylinders to make his hand. He left the fingers more or less as they came out of the extruder, but altered the large extrusion by flattening it to create the palm of the hand. Brooke did perhaps the most altering, using extruded cylinders as the basis of her stacked anemone-like forms, but she used pinch methods to significantly alter the shape of the extrusions.

extruded hand by Carlos Garcia Alcantar

Cylinders aren't the only shapes or forms that can be extruded. Our studio has a bunch of options for solid and hollow extrusions with the 4" diameter extruder and the smaller 1" diameter extruder, but we also have an expansion box that can be used on the 4" wall extruder to stretch out the clay into larger extrusions. Artists can also make their own extruder dies by cutting metal or wood or by printing their own designs. The YVC clay studio just purchased a couple of new 3D printed extruder dies we hope to put to good use this winter.

Extruded Robot by Thai See (@thaiidraws on Instagram)

Students in the fall class used a lot of cylinders, but also a few other forms. Thai used a square hollow die to create the body, head, and legs of her robot and she and several other students extruded coils or solid cylinders that were incorporated into their sculptures.  

Extruded teapot in the style of Ray Bub by Jordan Golob

Some artists, when working with coils, prefer to extrude their coils so they are uniform. Whether rolling coils by hand or setting up and using the extruder is more labor intensive may be up for debate, but I know some folks prefer their coils extruded. Jordan used coils both decoratively and as building elements to create her extruded/coiled blue form above. 

Extruded Robot (back) by Thai See

Both Thai and Jordan used the square hollow extruder for parts of their forms. Thai chose to alter her square leg extrusions to make them narrower where they attached to the body of the robot.

horned and antlered vases by a Fall 2022 student

Lots of people like to use an extruder to create uniform handle shapes, but handles don't show up as often in sculpture. One student, who chose to remain anonymous here, chose to used the handle extruders to create a vareity of different horns and antlers on a set of extruded vases. 

surfer on an extruded wave by Amanda Goodrich

One of the unusual dies I like to see students use is an extruder die that looks like a wiggly line. When students use it, it creates what appears to be a slab with a zigzag built in. Amanda used this slab-like extrusion to create a solid wave of water for her surfer guy. She chose a copper glaze in an oxidation firing which highlights the texture pools at the bottom of the wave with an oceanic color.

Pegasus by Thunder Morales

Thunder's pegasus also utilizes the extruded wave/slab/zigzag form. In the Pegasus's case, the wave makes up the wings. Thunder also used hollow extrusions for the body, legs, and head of the mythical creature. This sort of standing form on 4 legs worries me because the legs can dry faster than the body, resulting in cracks or collapse. 

Pegasus from the front

However, the extruder turned out to be a great tool for this form because the legs and body started hollow and started structurally sound. Thunder was able to focus his time and effort on shaping the face and creating the mane and tail, rather than on balancing the form so it wouldn't fall.

Cats and Coyotes by Amy Matson

Amy's wall hanging sculpture of cats and coyotes includes 3D printed, slabbed, and extruded elements. She used the extruder in the shape of a coyote to extruded most of the tiny creatures walking along the sides of the sculpture. This die has always mystified me a bit, because it only works if you plan to extrude a long tube in this shape, then cut it into lots of flat pieces where you can see the shape. 

Trick Teapot by Amy Matson

Amy's other extruded form was her trick teapot with bamboo. The bamboo decoration, as well as the bamboo handle and spout were made from hollow extrusions, but so was the body of the form, which actually has two containeed sections that we can't see, as their openings are quite small and hidden in the bamboo.

It's often difficult to tell scale in photos on a website, especially ones without references. Amy's teapot is fairly small, more or less regular teapot size, while Thunder's pegasus is fairly large. But the winner as far as scale is certainly Derek's ancient robot relic sculpture.

Ancient Robot by Derek Arneecher

Derek used the extruder to create quite a lot of material. He had a plan going in and pretty much stuck to that plan until it came to the firing. As I explained in a previous post, Derek's sculpture had a fatal flaw, a closed hollow section in the middle, which caused it to explode during the firing. Since it was a large sculpture to begin with, it made a large mess in the kiln, but I was very pleased by how he finished the form after firing, with epoxy and acrylic paint. He chose to highlight the cracks and make them part of the story of this ancient robot form.

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.

3D Printed Pieces, Glazed and Finished: Fall 2022

 

Jordan Golob, Lego Minifig

The 3D printer is a relatively new tool in the clay studio, and one that I had never used before YVC purchased one. Because of the pandemic and my cancer year, as well as some time before the pandemic when it was down for repairs, we haven't really used the tool a great deal. (By my count, I think this quarter can only be the 5th or 6th quarter in which I required students to use it--but it may have been less based on how long it was broken.)

Brook Mason, printed sculpture

I starteed assigning the 3D printer as a tool for my Intro to Clay and Hand-building classes before I had properly learned to use it. When we started, the assignment was, essentially, here are the tools, here's what works, let's figure it out together.

Julia Snow, printed Tardis

I have a much better understanding of how the printer works now, and can help the students troubleshoot both the printer and software, as well as some basic troubleshooting in TinkerCAD, but there are still students who know TinkerCAD and 3D printers (the plastic kind) better than I do. What this means is that I regularly learn from students on this tool. 

Yarelli Sanchez, chicken pitcher

Students using the 3D clay printer this quarter had 2 main options for using the printer. First, they could used TinkerCAD or another program to design a 3D object and print it. The focus, if they choose this approach, is on learning TinkerCAD and planning for a form that the clay printer can handle.  

Amy Matson, Cats & Coyotes, printed and slab built 

The clay printer prints very soft, wet clay, which means that the clay sticks together fairly well when squished together, but it also means that it can't stand up without support.  If the printer squeezes out a line of clay on top of another line of clay, those two lines (coils) will stick and the bottom one will support the top one. The printer is very good at printing straight vertical walls of clay.

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, printed stacking forms

If the printer moves slightly to one side between levels, so that the top extruded line of clay is above but slightly to one side of the line below, the clay still sticks, still supports itself, but now the wall is at a slight diagonal. The printer can do this just fine and print cones, pyramids, vases, and similar forms. However, if the printer nozzle moves too far to one side between levels, the bottom layer of clay no longer supports the top layer and the top layer just falls into open space.

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, printed stacking forms

For this reason, the printer cannot handle overhangs, or flat tops, or the very top/middle of a dome shape. There are at least 4 ways to deal with these shapes. First, of course, students can avoid these shapes and design their print in a way that they aren't necessary. Second, they can print everything but the flat part or the top of the dome and simply add a slab or more clay later.

Derek Arneecher, printed shelves

Some students design their print in pieces so that only the verticals are printed and any and all horizontals are slabs added later. Jordan's Lego Minifig is a good example of this. She printed the body, neck, head, and cylinder on top of the head separately. She couldn't have printed the body and head, or even just the head in one piece because because the shoulders, the bottom of the head, and top of the head are all horizontals that would have fallen in. 

Yarelli Sanchez, chicken pitcher

Yarelli also printed her chicken pitcher in pieces, though in her case, some of them could have been printed together as one.  The transition from cylinder to cone on top could have printed as one, but she chose to print them separately. She cut off the top of the cone after printing, altered it, and used it as the beak. However, the three pieces of the handle and the feet had to be printed separately and attached later.

printed turtles, student work

All of the options I mentioned so far are for students printing a hollow form. The third and fourth options are to print with an interior support or to print an entirely solid print. In the student example above, the student, who wished to be anonymous here, designed the turtle in TinkerCad, but hte top of the back and head wouldn't print at this angle, so they adjusted the print settings in Simplify 3D (the software we use to "slice" our 3D objects into printable files. If you were to flip over any of these three turtles, you would find a latticework interior that adds stability to the horizontal or nearly horizontal clay walls.

Thai See (@Thaiidraws on Instagram), printed hand and hand-built snail

Thai printed her hand completely solid and carved away the excess clay later, after it had dried somewhat. This approach is more labor intensive in some ways, because it requires extra work after the print has been made, but it allows for less fussing with the software and may allow for a more complicated form that otherwise wouldn't print.

Amanda Goodrich, printed castle

The assignment paramenters for the printer allow for a completely different option as well. Students may print a simple form mulitiple times and simply use that form to create a more complicated form. Brooke's sculpture is a great example of this. She printed a pyramid 6 times, then attached each pyramid together in the middle to create a form that could never haver printed on its own. The end result is a sculptural form that would have been more difficult to make any other way. She went further by cutting and carving triangles into and through the printed forms after they were attached.

Brook Mason, printed sculpture

Derek and Carlos both printed simple forms that were meant to be displayed together. Derek's printed fomrs are a set of shelves, some of which are attached together. Carlos' pieces were designed to stack together to form a cube, but one broke before firing, leaving a gap in the design. 

 

Carlos Garcia Alcantar, printed stacking forms

Valeria's piece also broke before firing, through no fault of her own. It was a printed cylinder with printed shapes added to the surface after printing to create a more interetsting shaped vase. Amy did something similar, on a smaller scale, with her printed vase and tiny printed pyramid decoration on the surface.

Printed Vase, Amy Matson