BFA Painting Critique

 I had my next to last BFA critique last week. I had a lot of helpful feedback and I'm ready to use it for my next two pieces. Here are some photos of some of the work set up.

A photo that Brian shot during my critique.

This is my newest painting. It is still in progress.

Breaking things on accident and on purpose.

I finally figured out why my pots were cracking! Apparently this little guy was to blame. He looks vicious enough.

These are the two pedestals that I made for my ceramic work. They aren't going to be just normal pedestals though. 

This is a practice run for the ceramic work that I will be putting into our BFA show. I am still working with the concept of time and how it seems to slow down during an accident. I cut a triangle out of the base of this pedestal and tied a string to it. At first the pedestal appears to be normal. When I tugged the string the triangle shaped corner pulls out from the base and all of the pieces begin to topple over with the pedestal.

The piece ceramic work for the show will be much simpler. There will be 16 pieces that stack straight up. I am going to film the work breaking and have it playing on a projector behind the fallen pedestal.

This is a ceiling fan motor that I have now wired to a dimmer switch to slow the motor. The fan is then wired to a plug in that is attached to a remote control receiver. I will be able to turn this motor on and off with a remote. On top of the pedestal will be a stack of bowls with a string through the middle that attaches to an arm on the motor. As the motor turns the bowls will collapse over as the string has slack and then sit back up. I want to display this at our BFA show and turn it off and on to make people think that they have knocked over the work. My hope is that I will have the ability to make people experience the slowing of time with the push of a button on a remote control.

Train Kiln

 We had our second wood fire in the train kiln that we built last spring. We even fired it off in 18 less hours than the last time. Drier wood, awesome workers and a good rhythm were a big help.

We carefully loaded our work into the kiln. Keeping the pots close together directs the flame through the pieces which creates the colorful patterns when it is finished.

Megan, Dan and Ian kept loading as the sun was setting.

Throwing in the wood gets pretty toasty when the temperature nears 2000 degrees.

Jay kindled through the wee hours of the night.

When the kiln was unloaded, we had a Space Lab show to display our work.

It is customary to make kiln gods to protect our pots through the firing.

This is some of my work from the firing.