5 Weeks of classes finished!

     This week I have been working on making forms for my balancing/time project. In order for this to be successful, I think that I will need to make nearly 100 different forms throughout the semester. I have about 30 made now and I am going back into the studio for quite awhile today and tomorrow.   
    

I used this image for a little motivation.

   
 There are a few decisions that I have been trying to make...

 If I am going to be filming the process of stacking these and displaying both the film and the remnants of the crashed pieces, will I need to do the filming in the place that they will be displayed?

These are the flat forms that I made today so that multiple pieces can stack on the same level using counter balance.

 I've also been trying to decide on the glaze techniques that I will use for this project. I know that I would like for there to be a lot of variation from piece to piece. I still haven't decided what colors that I would like to use or if I would prefer to have bright colors and fire them in the electric kilns.


     I have nearly finished the first installation of the semester. There are a few bugs to work out with it. I don't like the fishing line I used to hold some things up. I'm going to think of other ways to support the sheet and hold the feathers in the air. I would rather show the material that I use to hold them there than to use the fishing line because I think it is distracting.
   
      I also need to adhere the wallpaper to a piece of foam so that it will get rid of the seams and ripples. It is just temporarily tacked to the wall right now. I think the background may also start to come out from the wall instead of remaining flat. That way the fake walls will also stand out from the walls. I haven't made a complete decision on that yet.

     I am getting worried that this is starting to look gimmicky. I am trying to make sure that it doesn't get overly acceptable. I don't want to create a bunch of "Family Fun" type of art. I think that lighting will play a big part in that. 

This week has been full of questions but I have made a lot of progress. I'm going to continue to explore.     

Gravity

     Here are some of the forms that I am working with for my modules project.
     In the spring I was exploring time as perceptional. I am very interested in the phenomenon of how time seems to slow down during an accident or traumatic event.
     In a previous blog post there are photos of this show in which I broke pottery and filmed it. I also reassembled it on fishing line and glued objects that appeared to be spilling out of various vessels.
     I hope that the viewer experience this phenomenon and reports their feelings about it instead of simulating these experiences for the them. This is why I have been making these forms to be stacked by the viewer that will possibly topple and break in the gallery. 
     I began to think more about the forms and what they looked like this weekend. I began to ask myself why. I think that it is important that I think about the aesthetic of the project. So it lead me to break it down.
      My time project has begun to incorporate my interest in gravity and balance.

     Last year and again this year I have had problems with my balance. Shortly after going to the doctor having them tell me that nothing is wrong I listened to a Radio Lab podcast about a lady with severe Vertigo. A problem in the inner ear causes problems with balance, vision and a sense that gravity isn't functioning in a normal way. I'm not sure that I have this but many of the things that she talked about had also happened to me but not so severely. I was intrigued about the part where she mentioned that the floor seemed to come up to meet her. For about two weeks the floor seemed to curve up to my feet. I felt as if I were always standing on a gently sloping hill, even in my kitchen.
      I started to research centers of gravity. The aesthetic of these objects need a deeper meaning. So far my idea is to calculate the center of gravity on these objects and mark them with glaze. I'm not sure on the technique that I am going to use. Also, their shapes need to be such that their center of gravities change from one object to the next.
     Gravity and time have more in common than it may seem. When we learn to walk as babies, the timing is more difficult to master than the mechanics. We have to time our steps in order to work with gravity. Our steps are timed with how our feet meet the ground. As we move our brains have learned to time our motions as well as factor in gravity. I plan to explore more of these links and similarities.


A new glaze! This one should be a semi-transparent, glossy red violet. 

Here are a few progress shots of my paintings so far. They still need more paint and some corrections in the drawing of the faces but they are getting much closer.

I have also cut out two new ones.

Verbs

     So after about 5 failed attempts at this sequence of photos, I have one that I like. The assignment was to pick a verb and then in some way use unfired clay. The verb I chose was to overextend. I am at a point in my work, in both painting and ceramics, that I am trying not to overdue anything. My senior year seems like a strange and stressful time to try and simplify things but that is what I am trying to do. I am trying to slow down and think about what it is that I'm doing.

     For this photo I blew up a balloon filled with slip until it burst. It was hard to do several takes of this while I was wearing all black. I have a lot of laundry to do. 

     I believe that this photo also goes along with my ceramic work from last year and my show in the Space Lab. It is also about time and how we perceive it. I have a fascination with examining the passing of time.

    

      Here is a progress shot of my next two cut out paintings. They are very much in the early drawing stages here. I'm excited about taking them further. Video, feathers, and painting on the wall behind will all be incorporated in this one.

      This is a form I have been playing with on the wheel. I want to make at least 50 closed in forms of different shapes for the off campus show in November. I then want to invite people to make their own "sculptures" out of them. They are all shaped strangely so I'm sure they will often crash to the ground but that is what I want to happen.
    
     This is the next step in to my Space Lab show last semester. I want the viewer to interact with the work and then interview them on their perception of time while participating. This is also my chance to poke fun at the gallery setting.

Time to Blow the Dust Off the Ol' Blog

                                 Hello readers! 
      My blog was pretty neglected over the summer. It also has been missing any posts about my paintings for a long time. I'm going to try and take care of these problems in one post. So here goes guys!
    


 I'm so super excited about this...

     The book The Geometric Unconscious finally came out!
It is a collection of five essays that cover geometric abstraction. One of my paintings from a little over a year ago is included in the essay by Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe. There are also a few paragraphs on why I fit into a book about geometric abstraction. It's for sale on Amazon and at many other bookstore. Wink. Wink.

                                  CERAMICS!!!!!!!

     It is here. My senior year and it comes with my own little studio in the ceramics room! It's time to start filling those shelves with work and making some huge pizzas by the looks of that giant Ragu can. 












    



Our new storage containers for glaze ingredients has me excited to start trying out some new glaze recipes.

 Some work drying and waiting for the construction for the new kiln and refurbished kiln room to wrap up.

This is where I start to talk about my paintings.
I thought I would start it off with a creepy photo of myself. 

This is a painting I did a year ago. It was inspired by a story written in Spanish by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This was near the beginning of my fascination with painting from Spanish literature. I like to be a part of long processes and then reflect on them. By painting from Spanish literature I begin a process of author's thoughts to paper, from Spanish to English (I am still learning Spanish so I have to translate some words into English), from story to painting and then from painting to a viewers thoughts.

 
 

   This is another painting from that same year. I was also trying to make my paintings more and more mysterious. I think that it is important that I don't give the viewer enough information. I hope that the paintings inspire them to make up their own story.

     This was the first painting in which I started to play with the shape of my surface. 

      Then the figures began to stick out beyond the edges of the canvas. I wanted to push that a little further so....

        then I painted this one.  I tried to play with perspective and to try and make the paintings more strange. That was a bad idea. It read as a mistake. I needed something more deliberate. I also decided it was time to let go of straight edges. 

     This was where that lead me. The painting was 8 foot by 8 foot in total space that it took up on the all. It was made from wood panel with wooden edges. The siding sticking from the door and window are real sheets of vinyl siding. There is also glass inside the window and door.
      The wood was too limiting. It created strange edges to the figures because it was too difficult to achieve a detailed line with a jigsaw. 

      I then began to work with foam. I cut the figure from a sheet of foam and then sealed the surface. This is the game plan for this year's work. The foam was an answer to a lot of the problems I encountered with the wood.
     This piece is going to be part of a much larger installation, at 15 feet long,  involving other shaped paintings and drawings as well as video and real objects.

Glaze Fest- Spring 2012

I mixed up a batch of my glaze, Miri's Metallic Magic and also did a few more tests with it. 

      I glazed a few bowls in my gun metal silver glaze and dipped their rims in a couple of other glazes to see how it might react with other colors.
     I also mixed up my silver glaze and added colorants to three different cups for testing. I tried out Rutile, Alumina and Copper Carbonate to a third. It will be like Christmas when I crack open the kiln to see the results!

The first bucket of my glaze.

I thought that lidded vessels had gotten the best of me but I tried again. I like this pot a lot better than my previous attempts. I still need to practice at making my lids fit better and getting the lids lighter. I have been experimenting with throwing my lids on a hump and trimming the knob out of it.

     Yay for a new job at a framing store! It made for a tough weekend while I worked both jobs until my two weeks notice is up. It is also the reason I put in twelve hours at the studio today.
     I am excited that I finished a lot of experiments today. My painting project is coming together and I plan to take some photos of it tomorrow to post on here.

The Dirt Bags Open House

      Most of my weekend was spent at the Dirt Bags Open House at IUS. I spent the morning, afternoon preparing and early evening at school checking out the work. There were others who put in two days effort into the preparations. Stephanie decorated our class sheep "You" above so she was presentable for visitors.

 We continued doodle fest on the lockers outside of ceramics. Connie snapped this photo of me, on the left, doodling away.

The ceramics class was unrecognizable and almost dust free. One of Jays awesome vessels is in the middle front and Kirstin's tiny little ceramic tree full of little details is to the right.

The 3d studio was a little disco room full of 3d art. There was a suit made out of coffee bags, a cardboard water fountain and another sheep!

     The foundations drawing class was decked out with tons of art and was fun to browse through.

     It was a fun weekend but it is time to get back to making art. I started throwing on the wheel tonight, the second to last day before wet work cut-off. It is time to get busy in painting and it is passed time that I get some photos of this semester's work up. I'll have to do that next week.

Train Kiln

 

     The train kiln ready for its inaugural firing! It was hard work but fun to build. I'm really excited that I was a part of its construction. 

     Jay and I had the overnight shift which looked a lot like this. It was pretty slow going at first because we would just throw in a few pieces ever so often as we built up the coal bed. I was bummed when I had to go to work and missed out on some of the stages of the firing.

 This is all the work laying out on the table before we loaded it in the kiln.

     I learned how to tumble stack. This is what the loaded work looked like inside the kiln. To achieve nice fire patterns we put the work down so that it would let the fire flow between the pieces. The ash blows through the kiln and melts on the pottery creating patterns and shine.
     The kiln has cooled down enough that we will be unloading it tomorrow. I am really excited to see how everything turns out.