High Fired

So to try and get the same connotations as the form I wanted the surface to have a skin like quality. After trying various glazes and only coming close with a 'skin like' glaze from a fellow student I tried firing the semi porcelain body up to stoneware temperatures (a good 100 or so degrees above its usual vitrification point). This worked amazingly. I found that if I bisq fired them to 900 degrees first, it meant I could use a diamond pad and wet and dry paper to smooth them down before the final firing. Once fired I then used a diamond pad to buffer them to a high level of smoothness. To seal the pots and give them a slight sheen I tried a spray on varnish, which was too shiny. I then had suggested to me that I should use beeswax. This worked a treat if applied liberally and buffered, so this is how I finished my pieces. I am extremely happy with the results and feel the likeness to skin and bone they have works well in balance with the ideas of the cast form.

No more erosion

After experimenting a lot with the combination of water erosion and rippled form I decided that the use of both was too much. I wanted the work to have the human connotations due to the notions of personality within the ceramics. This lead me to only use the rippling and folded forms as I felt they spoke for themselves in this respect.

I think with their references to skin bone and the breakdown of form these pieces are strong in their concept.

Cardiff

So I submitted a proposal for a group exhibition and got in with my work. The exhibition was held in Cardiff and called Number Sixteen (after the old town house we were using for it). It was nice to collaborate with other artists of the same age and put on this exhibition... I think it was a success. Here are some snaps of my work in it...

New Mould

After experimenting with the larger borrowed mould and discovering this new technique, I next decided to make my own mould, making the form slightly larger and with the inclusion of a small foot on the bottom. This idea was to again reference the human form in ceramics... ie. the foot, belly, neck, lip etc...

Loosing Form

My next step started as an accident. However it works so well to convey the meanings behind my work. The use of an air gun was originally to try and get the cast form from the mould. On trying to remove the form however I blasted it too hard while it was not dry enough. This happy accident opened upa new way to alter the form without being in full control. The effects it gave were ripples and folds akin to skin.

I started to use this in conjunction with the water erosion.

Takeshi Yasuda

I went to a lecture from renownd ceramicist Takeshi Yasuda. This was extremely interesting, the way he talked and mused over various aspects of his life and the stories he told. One thing that particularly made me think was when he talked about pyroplasticity. He said that we use this word as a way of describing the state of the clay when at high temperatures. However we dont like to use the word deformed or warped due to the connotations they have with people. We are beings of language and we compare ceramics to humans.

Think Big

All of my work so far has all been on quite a small scale. I next decided to go bigger. To experiment with this I borrowed a mould and started casting big. This allowed me to experiment with larger scale water erosion.

The erosion on this scale worked a lot better than before, allowing whole sections to become really deeply pitted on the surface yet not fully eroded away. I next decided that I needed to find a way to accent these. Because of the nature vs culture aspect of my work, I decided that applying a lot of red iron oxide (the colourant in naturally found cheap clays, and then sponging it off would give me the contrasts I was looking for.

This worked really well and so I decided to do it to all of my forms.

Oxides and Slip

My next step was to think of how I could get the oxides to build up on the surface enough to be able to be seen after high firing. This lead me to think of maybe using a slip so that the oxides would literally stick to the bone dry pot. I also decided to try using terracotta slip on the outside of porcelain, giving a contrast of nature and refinement.

Oxide Tests

To try and accent the breakdown in the water erosion process, I decided to try putting oxides in the water during erosion. Not only would this accent the texture hopefully, but leave a residual effect of the 'tide' marks on the side of the form.

This worked really well on the un-fired pieces, however after going into the kiln they lost all colour.

More Erosion

After letting the water eroded tests dry, I then fired them to vitrification (1280 degrees). I noticed however that when they had dried, the lovely gradiented tidemarks from where the water had soaked into the bone dry clay had gone. This was dissapointing, however it meant that some of the pieces had textured form seemlessly transforming into unflawed form.

Anyway I put them in the kiln and this was the result...

The latter ones are a combination of torn, dropped and water eroded ones. I felt as if I had to try these out on a larger form. I decided to cast one of the green plastic bowls from the plaster studio in ceramics. This was due to its sophisticated yet still simple form. The green bowl has a small foot on which lifts the curved form up off the surface it sits on just enough to give it a more elegant and uplifted overall feel. I cast one of these (as with everything else I had done so far; in porcelain) and then used the same water erosion technique on the rim of that form.



This form gives a far more refined look to the bottom half of the form, and using that in conjunction with the roughness and breakdown of the water erosion technique really seems to work. I feel that when cast in porcelain, the smooth form looks so plain and elegant, and the eroded section exposes the inside of this 'perfect' clay wall, creating not only a window into the clay body, but creating a tension between the two textures.

I want to accent this broken down texture. To do this I will explore the use of oxides and slips in the water that the form breaks down in.

Water Erosion

My next step, as mentioned in the previous post, was to create a way of altering the form without too much interference from me. This lead me to think about how natural forms alter, and why. Water was the obvious choice. A part of the clay body itself, it is one of the main elements that alters natural forms. Colossal structures can be worn away by water; and so I decided to let water have its effect on my cast forms.

Water works best at breaking down the structure of clay when it is in bone dry stage. Therefore I cast forms, let them become bone dry, and then immersed sections of the form in a bowl of water.

And the outcome...

These textures and broken down edges are incredible in my point of view. I love how they expose the clay body within the cast form. Also this unpredictability of how the bone dry clay slates off and the bubbles that form in the process is exactly what I am after. They create a juxtaposition between the smooth clay body of the cast form and the rough edges and surfaces of the eroded areas. This is definitely the method I am going to pursue, maybe alongside the dropping whilst still leather hard method.

Torn

My next attempt to alter the form of the cast object was to change it whilst still plastic. To do this I took the cup forms out of their moulds when they had just released but were still soft. This meant I had a lot more freedom to distort the overall form; using methods such as dropping the object, hitting it and tearing it. Here are some pictures of the outcomes of these experiments.

The shapes, shadows and contrasts in the photos I took from these are beautiful. The uniqueness of each form relates so well to my idea of the 'personality' of each separate cast. Although they all came from the same mould, they all have their own shapes, their own imperfections and faults. This reflection to people in society works. However, I do feel with these that I am almost 'playing God' with how they end up. It is entirely in my hands how they rip or distort. This is going to be a hard concept to get around, as technically I am making these objects from start to finish, so escaping the creator aspect is nigh impossible. I do feel although, that if I let an element of chance in, something I don't control (either in entirety or at least by part), then it would reflect the forms own interaction with the environment it has been exposed to. This yet again creates a new conceptual layer.

Anyway... here are a few more (ever so slightly touched up in photoshop) images of the torn cup forms.