Ideation, Proposal, and Initial Prototypes

Proposal

View the proposal, timeline, and preliminary work.

Initial Prototypes and ideation overview

Hands needed to roll clay today. Rolled coils, thin widths and short lengths. My senses were clearly not interested in coil building in the round or making a vessel. Flipping through my sketchbook/backlog of ideas, a drawing of a cube spoke to me. I had been wanting to work on geometrics/frames since last year when I first began working with clay but felt friction until this moment, when it was simply time. Feels like a plug has been released on this idea and it’s bringing relief to have the idea being articulated and not sitting within.

I feel my hands less the more noise and visual movement there is around me. There was some commotion in the studio that I could feel and was sensationally distracted by, and I felt little of my hand articulations.

Testing: clay body, does it hold vertically and horizontally at leather hard? Joins connected using slab techniques for corners, will they hold together with this clay/slip/my pressure?

Posted to Instagram. Positive feedback!

Hands wanting rolling and pinching articulation. Reviewed first cube prototype, joints look like there’s cracking and pretty weak. A second smaller prototype, heavy attention to working the joints. Created insulation support on inside of cube to support top square being added. Need something to minimize lateral movement – jig? Interesting to explore the studio looking for a cube or rectangular object for support and noticing that there are very few right-angled shapes in the space – mostly round – almost like a metaphor of clay’s history and predominant use as organically-shaped vessels.

I had a visual appear that felt like it needed to be built within a structure. Initially I thought it would fill a room and have a chair at the center – it represented my feelings-thoughts-sensations and being at the core of them. I don’t conceive of a space to build this inside of. Then I had the experience of responding to Gormley’s space and felt ready to build out an idea that’s been sitting. And I thought, perhaps the ceramic frame could house something like this. I don’t know if it will rightly resolve this image/vision I had. It seems to be acting as a stepping point. The relationships are linear-texture-tactile-energy-movement-hands-body-memory-internal-external.

Bisqueware

High fire

Larger Prototype

Increased coil width + length of walls according to curiosity of a certain width when rolling coils by hand

Stretching-sore-disconnect-frustration-powerless-go faster-not working-what’s going on-clunk clunk clunk-just give in and use the lumpy, clunky, uneven coils and it’ll be a snapshot. Question…was it in response to a conversation that I had earlier that emotionally irked me? Can that affect my hand connection and relationship to clay? Hands tired from yesterday’s building?

Not sure I’ll go this big again. My setup was very awkward. I hit my head so many times on the wood, which caused the sides to fall and break. It felt monumental, because I was listening to music and really focused, and the breaks were such a break to focus. Aside from this, it felt really good to be climbing/manoeuvring around the structure.

Could be a challenge to disassemble and put through the kilns. I’m wondering about next trying very thick coils, but this would increase drying time quite a lot. Unsure of the next iterations.

Large cube at greenware stage. I arrived at the studio not knowing if it would have broken during the drying process because I didn’t leave much room for it to shrink, but it had actually lifted itself up and took care of itself just fine! Wonderful surprise.

Cube is then prepared for bisque with silica sand between the clay and kiln shelf to decrease scraping/getting stuck/breakage when the clay shrinks during firing.