One Finished Piece & More "Magic Clay" Testing

Finally! A finished, fired, glazed piece! I was quite happy with the way it turned out, though it's not very large, perhaps 4 inches tall & 6 inches long. I used a clear glaze on a white stoneware clay body. Though I got it back right before spring break, I'm just getting around to posting... as I have been working a ton this week! In the evenings, I have been trying to muster up a bit of creative energy to work on further Magic Clay testing. I would say it's highly likely this next piece blows, as I believe I was pushing the boundaries a bit in terms of what I think this clay can do.

Day 1:

Rolling out tubes (which will be legs & body)

& letting them dry. 

Day 2:

Moisten dry body, slip & score, add more clay...

& add the legs.

All legs attached, now we have a loose bear form.

Scoring the form for addition of more clay.

Day 3:

Adding more clay to try to shape the bear. At this point in the process, I could see it would have been more helpful to have started w/ more than random hollow tubes & given more thought to the final form. It's legs were too long & the body a bit short. 

Day 4:

Finishing up. It is in times like these that I have some serious envy of those of you that actually have studios! (Or homes, or garages, or space!)My impromptu "studio" set up in my apt takes up about a 3rd of my tiny living room space!(And makes for some serious clean-up afterwards!)

The semi-finished bear. I definitely could've kept going on this piece... but I had already added so much clay, and I could tell I wasn't going to get it to look the way I wanted due to my lack of pre-planning.

Plus, supposedly, you are able to go from dry clay to wet, (if you moisten, slip & score) which you cannot do w/ "normal clay," but I have some serious doubts to whether this will actually work & really didn't want to spend much more time on it if the chances are high that it won't work!

So, we'll see what happens. It'll likely take weeks to find out, so I guess I'll just have to start another project...

:)

Magic Clay & New Assignments

A friend of mine had recommended to me a paper-embedded clay called Akio that is supposed to be great for larger sculptural works... apparently you can build thicker walls, & experience less cracking, which would be awesome. Problem is, I couldn't find it here. And to pay for shipping from the Pac Northwest... well, that wouldn't be cost effective!

But, as luck would have it, they had a similar product called "magic clay" @ NM Clay in Albuquerque. It's a fiber embedded clay that is supposed to have those same magical qualities: less cracking, more forgiving AND supposedly you can build wet to dry... thus you don't have to worry as much about keeping the clay at a uniform moisture level, which I had some difficulties with on the previous larger works I attempted. I peeled off a strip so you could see the fibers. What a trip, huh? It's like furry clay! :) When the clay is fired, the tiny fibers burn away, leaving just the clay body behind.

Well, I had really been wanting to try this new clay, but had been busy w/ other class assignments (w/another clay body) & life in general, so it has been sitting & waiting. We were given our new assignment (loosely based on the concept "inside out- outside in") so i decided to try this magic clay w/ one of my 2 ideas. I wanted to incorporate the bear in this project, and when I was out hiking the other day, an idea came about making a woman emerging from a bear form. Now, I thought this was an original idea, but it also felt very familiar. A woman in class & I had been talking... a conversation originating from my previous bear projects, about how she had heard that if a bear was skinned, it looked very similar to a human form. I thought the idea I had was perhaps related to that conversation... a relationship between human & animal form, and incorporating the concept of bringing the inside (human form) out. But here's an interesting thing about making art- we are very often influenced consciously or unconsciously by other artists. After several days of thinking, I looked up some Kiki Smith images and found very similar subject matter. But I wanted to go with it, because I did like the idea,  & I've never tried to sculpt the human form. Oh, Geesh, here's some of my sketches so you get the general idea of where I was heading.

Below, building a rough human-like form. Behind it are the bear legs, but I couldn't get it to look quite right, so had to improvise from the original sketches.

Addition of head, arms & bear head, which is hollow & hangs off the side. If you're wondering what that thing is hanging of the left arm, it's supposed to be bear skin ( c'mon, use your imagination!) And the left leg... well it blends into a bear's hind foot, of course!

Addition of hair & attempting to sculpt the body a bit.

The semi- finished piece below.

It's very rough,amateurish, and of course featureless (I need to take a class on sculpting features!) but there's something about it I really like. I think it's actually the "unfinished" look it has to it... the way the woman's legs are not complete, as if she's rising up. Plus, it's a starting point, as well as a test of the Magic Clay.