Broken Ceramics: Project Down

There is less to be said and more to be seen when it comes to my ceramics. I don't have a ton of experience in throwing, but what I did manage to produce I am proud of. This semester was tricky, because our first big assignment was a throwing project, and I fell behind and didn't manage to finish the last step before crit. Because of which I got a super lousy grade and proceeded to feel discouraged about throwing. I made a semi-promise to myself that I would stop throwing and spend more time on other things, because it clearly wasn't worth the time and effort, if my hours and hours of work produced a meager C-. But come the final interview with me and my teacher, she was disappointed that I hadn't kept up. She said that I had talent and she thought that I could get further with it. Soooo fine. I will try it again this coming semester.

In the meantime, here is what I have been working on this past few months.

Pieces from my Autumn Series. I painted wheat stalks underneath the glaze.

Also part of my Autumn series.

Christmas Jug. Part of the Winter Series.

This particular jug was built from two separate pieces attached together after the fact.

I call these my Frog Jugs, for self-explainable reasons I'd hope.

This jug was also two seperate pieces joined together. The difference with this one is the base piece was actually thrown upside down to how it is now. Then I was playing with the shapes afterwards, flipped it upside down, put the small round one on top, and boom. My Killer Whale Jug. It is also the only jug I made that pours well. But not just well. This jug pours amazingly. I must copy what I did.

A strange little bread box. I made it, I love it, I have no idea what to do with it.

Hand built lace cups.

Part of the Spring Series.

This jug started to 'melt' while I was throwing it, so I just stopped and kept it was it was. I call it my Melting Pot.

Garden Knome Castle. Or something. A project working on interlocking shapes.

Obviously, a watering can type shape. The jug for my Summer Series. The glazes in this one did super neat things, that I have shown other people and they glazed their pieces for a similar effect. I want to play with it more this semester to get it down to a science.

I know the piece on the right is wood fired, but the one on the left.. I cannot remember. It either was definitely wood fired, or I used one of the glazes we have that gives a vessel a wood-firedesque look to it. I'm just not sure if this was that one or not.

These cups, and the mug beneath it, were part of my first Woodfire. Officially my most favorite way of firing ceramics.

Also wood fired. These two were one of the first things I threw beginning of this year. Looking at those compared to my other, later works, I am super pleased with my progress, and anticipate greater things this semester. Here's hoping!

Arting It Up

Hello! Yes I am still here, and yes I am still making art! I tell you, this school year is absolutely insane. I cannot remember a time where I have been so outrageously busy as I have been the past four weeks. But I digress - My sister just highlighted me in her blog today (click here!), and I figured this is the perfect time to update all my social media! May as well, so people know I'm still active. I guess.. I'm very bad at this social media thing. But at any rate, here we are! On my right, we have Barbie Antoinette for my Art History project. I am recreating a dress from Marie Antoinette's time made from tissue paper. She's a work in progress, but I'm having fun.

Below we have my finished Season Series from Ceramics. All glazed and fired and looking pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself.

 We have Spring on the left and Autumn on the right.

 And Winter on the left and Summer on the right.

 I had a particularly good day in drawing today, knocking off two impressive (for me) 15-minute drawings of one of our models, and two equally as impressive 1-hr long drawings of one of our other models, both done in chalk pastel (below).

 A couple self portraits. The one on the left was done a couple weeks ago, the left page being a line drawing and the right being tonal. The image on the right is an unfinished composition of three self portraits, but the top left face is complete and I am very happy with it.

Last but never least we have painting. The one on the left was for our Halloween project called "Dance with Death", and I decided to do death of religion and get all symbolic. Which I did and it was great, but I would have liked to maybe do another one that was actually scary and more Halloweeny. Oh well. On the right I have a splatter painting that I did today that I think is rather neat and I would like to make more of them. And so I am. Because they're fun. I'm also experimenting with colour and colour mixing. There are colours that can mix with other colours, and there are colours that should never touch each other. I am experimenting with those pallettes and I am excited to see what sorts of colours I can come up with.

In the meantime I am staying busy with the Visual Art Society. We just had our first art sale and we are planning for our Christmas sale taking place in a couple of weeks here. Ain't no rest for the wicked, that's for sure!

Until next time, peace and love my pretties :)

Thank God It's Nice Out

Periodically throughout the last couple of weeks I have been having mini-meltdowns resulting in the deep contemplation of life. What am I doing, why am I doing it, what will I do when I'm done school, what school should I continue on to, should I continue on to more schooling at all, where will I live, what will I do, et cetra. I have never felt so stressed or overwhelmed in my life. And it's interesting to me; I like to stop and observe myself when I'm having a meltdown, and analyze my reactions. How I respond to people, what I'm like, what I say and how I say it, during these times of mental crisis. A pleasing result of said analyzation is the realization that I am actually not one to complain about my course load. There is an unfortunate number of students, both first and second years, young and mature, who complain about how much school they have to do. How many classes, how much homework, and so on and so forth. Being perfectly honest, I have more work than even the full time art students do, because I am the President of the Visual Art Society. And that right there is the sole reason why I don't complain about my course load. I chose (essentially) to become VAS President, and I knew how that would impact my schooling. However can I just say...

Ceramics takes up all your time anyways, so taking just that course alone is a feat.
English: We've had essays and papers due every other week.
Professional Practice: Is a two hour class that is of almost no benefit, should definitely not be a two hour class, and is a huge suck of my valuable time.
Painting: I've discovered that yes, I truly suck at it. It is not my forte and I have accepted that. I will stop being so high and mighty about it now, and succumb to the fact that I am not a 2D artist. Anyways I'm working on my third painting of the semester, and I appear to like painting big. Which doesn't do a lot in terms of saving time or materials, let me tell you that much.
Art History: We just had our midterm, which was stressful enough as it was, but our first draft of our final project is due next class, which means i have to actually start it, and of course knowing me I took the difficult way out and decided to do a mixed media sculpture... On top of that, two chapters of the text book we HAVE to read before class because it's an entire discussion class, so we need to know what we're discussing beforehand. Also it's a potluck class, so I have to cook something.
I'm working all day this Thursday, and Friday is drawing which I'm super duper behind on because we had 20 freakin assignments due for midterm. 20! I had like.. 13? So many of us didn't have all of them done. And they're all due for final mark a week from Friday.
Coming up: A week long gallery exhibition with my friends Hannah and Keah. Up the same time I'm hosting a VAS art sale. I'm setting up and taking down both exhibitions in the same week. I am being quite dictator-like when it comes to this art sale. I demand that if you want something in the sale, you must help with the set up and/or run and/or take down of said sale. If your name is not on the sign up sheet for shifts, but your work is in the selection to be put out, I will remove your items and refuse to enter them into the sale.
Is that totally unreasonable? I just know that I have to train everybody right from the get go- if you don't help, nothing happens. Period. I cannot do all the work. I have no idea how Chase managed it last year. It's completely beyond me.
I also have posters to print and people to email and money to collect and retreats to attend and meetings to attend and classes to miss because of said meetings, and lots of talking to people about the sale and about the society.
My ceramics project is due in four weeks. Painting is due in less than a week. Drawing is due in a week. English.. well, I just have to read an entire book for English in less than two weeks. No big deal... (Hint: I'm a very slow reader and it takes me forever to get through a freakin book. Which is why I stopped reading a while ago. Ain't no body got time for dat). Art History proof of project is due in a week. I have to get stuff ready for my exhibition at the end of next week. Get sheets filled out for the art sale...

So basically, if we're friends and I've stopped talking to you altogether, don't take it personally. I've probably also stopped eating and sleeping and possibly showering. See you at Christmas :)

P.S. I'm not actually as upset or anxious as I've made it sound, or if I am I'm handling it remarkably well. I didn't exaggerate in what I have to get done in the next couple weeks, but I seem to be coping with it all rather decently. As long as no one makes me angry.

Oh that's another thing. This entire week has been all about feminism. Feminism this and feminism that, blah blah blah argue argue blaaahh. I hate the subject altogether, because I think it's absolutely ridiculous, and I can't get away from it! Freakin women!

No hate male please.

See what I did there?

Art Update

I have been ridiculously busy these past couple of weeks, and here's some pictures to help show why.

First we have mine and Hannah's space we took over whilst studying for our Art History midterm. The exam was seperated into two parts - one was an in class slide recognition, and the other was a take home, open book. Final mark: 98%. :)

Next we have painting. First assignment was an Expressive Landscape assignment, in which I completed this 3 feet x 3 feet acrylic painting. Our second assignment was another three week one, called Three Style Boogie. The idea was we drew randomly from a selection of artistic styles (for example Cubism, Expressionism, Impressionism, etc), and put together a painting using three of them. I drew Orientalism, Comic, and Psychadelic. This is the result. 1.5 feet x 3 feet acrylic.

Something I've realized, now that I'm starting on my third painting, is that there is clearly a colour pallette of choice here. My four colours of choice are Pthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Red, and Indian Yellow Hue. If I only ever had those four colours to paint with for the rest of my life, I'd be okay with that.

Moving on, we have drawing. I've done quite a few drawings in the past couple of weeks, as our drawing teacher is insane and assigns a huge amount of homework per week. At any rate, I'll only post pictures of my favourites.

In drawing I was focused on the landscapes, as was the assignment for the last month and a half, but I was also thinking about expression. I was going for expression in line in the two plant drawings, I was going for expression in atmosphere in my two fir tree series, and I was going for a sense of emotion in my colourful one.

And now we  have the class that has been taking absolutely all of my time: Ceramics. Our assignment for the past few weeks is a Pouring and Drinking assignment, focusing on things thrown off the wheel. The idea was to make a series or a set, something that obviously goes with each other. How I chose to deal with this project was just throw throw throw until I had a good amount of stuff, and then try to match them with each other. Because nothing was ever consistent with me, so I ended up with a few different shapes.

At this point in time I have finished glazing all my pieces that are ready to be glazed. Our teacher has this thing against hoarding our work, which makes sense, and I look at all my stuff and scold myself. But then I realize that it's not that I've been hoarding my work; I just made it all at the same time. And I kept...

Making...

More.

Bit of advice: If you're an arts student and you're going into ceramics and you're an over-achiever, you're never going to get any other work done. Ever.

So anyways, I finally have enough stuff bisqued, and before I was ready to glaze I had to sort them out and figure out the set I wanted to put them in. I found a theme. Naturally, it has to do with nature and landscapes, as does everything else in my life apparently.

So first we have spring. I have glazed them with pale, natural colours. I chose these three for spring because the pouring vessel looks like it's melting, the large bowl has black and white drips, as if icicles are melting, and the cup is just nice.

The next set is summer, also three pieces. I chose these three for summer because the pouring vessel looks like a watering can, the bowl looks like a fountain, and the cup has blue and white slip on it, so it's gonna be bright and colourful. I've glazed them with blurs, reds, whites, and yellows if I do remember correctly.

Autumn is next. Oh I should say, the cool thing about what I'm doing now with the pulling of items together after I've made a bunch, is that there was stuff I already had on the go before I was given this assignment, and some of them have just worked out in the themes. So this one's autumn. I'm probably only going to have three pieces, just like the other two seasons, but I've used two pouring vessels in case one doesn't turn out very nicely.

Naturally, I've glazed them ambers, browns, and beiges. Maybe a green or two, too.

And then we have winter. Winter to me is cold and gloomy and dead and gross and I don't like it. So most of my winter pieces I've glazed white, black, beige, and other kinda pale, sickly colours. However I also have some bright red and greens, since Winter to me also means Christmas, and is in fact the only thing that redeems winter in my eyes.

Again, I'm probably only going to have three pieces in the set, but I have extras in case they turn out hideous. I chose these two pouring containers because of the way I've built them, they reminded me of snowmen.

So there you have it! You are now caught up in all my projects. Coming up: Glazed works as well as lots of self portraits and a Halloween painting! Stay tuned!