Oh So Very Black

For the most part, my attempt to revise ceramic vessels by firing them over again in a reduction kiln resulted in improvements.  Sometimes they got worse, other times they just became different.  In the case of two refired lidded vessels they went from very little smoke pattern to very dark.  But because the darkness had a variable texture and shine, I decided to keep them.  On the larger jar, there were a few spots of delaminating glaze.  On this covered the areas with gold leaf.  The pot itself had a somewhat metallic sheen from the high heat and organic matter, almost like raku ware.  The gold touches worked okay on the pot for this reason.
The smaller jar got quite dark indeed.  The left is the before, the right after. 

From Bottle to Bowl: More Ceramic Revisions

At the end of last year, I had decided to cull through my collection of small ceramic vessels and musical instruments in order to revise what I could and discard the rest.  That project was finally completed with the last pit firing a few days ago.  The project took much longer than I had anticipated because I should have just thrown out more and salvaged less.  My proclivity towards art rescue  prevailed over common sense and everything that could possibly be restored by re-tuning, resurfacing and firing over again was “fixed” in such a way.  Some fixes were successful, others not, and a few were more trouble than they were worth. 
I post today a small example of a piece that overlaps a successful fix that was still more trouble than it was worth.  The pit fired bowl pictured above had started out as a reduction pit fired bottle with a strange stopper.  I didn’t like the surface so I sanded it down.  In order to make it truly a nice shape I sanded down quite a while - so far that the top part of the bottle fell off.  Now it became a bowl.  So I threw away the odd stopper, finished the edge of what was now a very different vessel, and added variously colored stains and terra sigillata.  This went back in to the pit for a smoke firing and a delightful little piece emerged.  But would such a piece recover the hours that went in to the revision?  I doubt it, unless it can be counted as hours spent in learning from experience.

Monumental Little Things

I had been making a series of miniature sculptures, thinking of ways to make them somehow look monumental despite being only two inches high.    I’m not sure what I would use such things for.  A diorama of a modern sculpture garden perhaps replete with moss, miniature benches and tiny pewter people.
The inspiration, I think, comes from the sculptures of Isamu Noguchi http://www.noguchi.org/noguchi that  I enjoyed seeing on my walks as a teenager in Princeton, New Jersey.  I loved those sculptures.  They seemed the perfect marriage of the man made and organic, natural forms.  They were large rocks just barely altered by human touch.  Some of the later sculptures of Max Ernst were like those too.  But I only became familiar with those much later. 
The materials from which these mini sculptures were made are natural to this part of South Carolina.  I mined local clay from which to sculpt them.  I burnished this natural clay, sometimes added some terra sigillata, then bisque fired them.  I then fired them in a traditional pit fire with local organic materials such as Spanish moss.  It is fascinating to think that art can be produced from all the stuff that can be mined from the ground or pulled off trees from one’s own back yard.
In firing these objects recently I did acquire some new and useful knowledge.  The sculptures were put inside larger, hollow vessels in my pit firing.  In fact, this technique may be yet another reason for their creation.  Pit firing takes a lot of effort - stoking the fire with wood and organic materials all day.  For this reason I like to make use of every square inch of space.  Covered jars and vases can be filled with other, smaller ceramic objects like beads and small whistles.  Hence the little sculptures.  After this last firing of my filled vessels, however, I noticed that two little sculptures had not made it in to the pit.  What to do?  I figured that they were small enough to stuff in to a coffee can filled with cedar chips and sticks.  I decided to see if a mini fire would work for the small sculptures.  So I lit the fire in the can and let things burn down for about an hour.  I then smothered it with some Spanish moss and put a piece of metal on top held down by a rock.  The next day I spilled out the contents and found nicely blackened ceramic pieces.  Pleased that this did not require a monumental effort I decided that  this would be a good technique for later if I just want to fire up a small collection of beads or other small objects.
These small three dimensional objects  are more like creative notes than finished art work.  They look like ideas for sculptures.  Perhaps that is exactly what they are - concepts for art that reality precludes the manifestation of.   Would that I could work in steel or concrete.  For now these little trinkets will rest on my desk until I put them away.

Bugle Taps for the Demise of a Ceramic Horse

In my last post, I related the tale of the difficulties I was having finishing two ceramic sculptures of horses.  Sadly, one of those broke a leg once again and had to be “put down.”  I have posted a picture of the sculpture once again in his intact state and in his deconstructed melt down. Not wanting to repair the broken leg once again I knocked the sculpture apart, soaked it in water, then wedged the clay back into a solid lump, ready to be used again at a later date.
The sculpture that did not break yet was decorated with a terra sigillata surface, burnished and put into the kiln.  Today marks the bisque firing.  Since I’ve been having difficulties with sculpture lately, I’m trying not to keep hopes too high that there is not some fault line or trapped air bubble waiting for the heat of the kiln to explode it.  Pretty thing, though, and a pity if he breaks as well.

The Trouble with Large Ceramic Horses

I completed and framed five drawings for an upcoming exhibition of horses at Gallery West in North Columbia.  The gallery owner liked my small clay sculptural whistles as well so I offered to make horse  statuettes from the same caramel colored local clay.  I came up with  a small collection of horse statuettes in various lively positions; grazing, leaping, stretching.  I then decided to offer my agent two larger horse sculptures.  I was fascinated by the ceramic sculptures of horses from the Chinese Han and Tang dynasties and wanted to make something stylistically similar - a horse with a small, narrow head, a stout body, a large saddle and legs smaller at the back than the front. 
The idea of making larger horses was fine, but the execution was problematic.  How to make a large, heavy body on long legs using a plastic medium like clay?  It was not easy.  Even though I followed archeaological examples I found of ancient ceramic horses made with hollow bodies and solid legs, I could never time the drying time on the legs well enough so that they would support the heavy body.  Hence they would break off when I turned the horse right side up.  Not wanting to melt the clay horses down again, I would re-attach the legs, sometimes using clay melting vinegar, patch it up and wait.  It took a few weeks of carving, drying, re-hydrating then carving some more but they were finally roughed out.  Now the test will be to see if they remain intact through the final drying, sanding, burnishing, firing and pit firing. 
To get an idea of scale, I have photographed the original horse statuette underneath the larger version of the ceramic horse.  These larger horses might survive the tooling around yet to come. Given the trouble they were to create, however, I most definitely do not plan to make them again.

Horsing Around

An exciting exhibition devoted to artistic interpretations of the equine form will open at Gallery West in Columbia, South Carolina on March 26, 2016.  I was graciously offered an opportunity to take part.  I’ll have a number of works on paper at the show and thought that I would create some small sculptures out of local clay as well. Although the exhibition does not open for another two months, my ceramic pit fired sculptures require so many steps that getting started early is a must.  Generally, I model a very roughed out form at first.  I then let these ceramic statuettes dry until leather hard ( too hard to bend but still soft enough to carve).  These are carved to better define a form and to add details.  For these forms I studied the horse sculptures from the Chinese Tang and Han dynasties as well as the horses of Persian miniatures.  Both of these tend to emphasize the most aesthetic parts of a horse; the long slender neck, the well muscled body, and the long legs.  Making the legs long and thin, the head small, and the tail stylized was a challenge in clay.  So many thin projecting parts just beg to separate or break off.  For this reason I’ll probably do a collection of eight to ten statuettes and two larger sculptures just to ensure having a set of at least five statuettes and one larger sculpture.
The images I’ve posted here are the semi-carved roughed out forms.  I will be adding to these during the upcoming weeks.  Sanding and polishing will follow, a bisque firing, then a final pit-firing.  God willing, they will be ready by March. 

Japanese Drawings Hidden in an Impossible Storage Room

Whatever happened, I wondered, to that notebook from 2006 that enclosed my studies of Japanese paintings from the Peabody Essex Museum?  The beginning of this year saw a thorough cleaning of my utility room and the unearthing of that notebook was a byproduct of the effort to pare down and reorganize.  I was pleased to find it and happy as well to have finally thrown away seven bags of materials that  I would most likely never use and give away three more bags of material that other artists still might use.
I had put off clearing out the utility room since 2011, in part because of prolonged illness, and also because this meant confronting piles of teaching materials that I would probably no longer use on account of disability.  This was the stuff of 2011 and before, just sitting there like a time capsule awaiting the same bravery to physically discard as the bravery to realistically relinquish the lifestyle that the materials represented.   Although I can now physically manage to drive very short distances, create art work from my home, and manage symptoms just long enough to go on short visits, the wear and tear of a teaching schedule is out of the question and most likely will remain so.  The first thing to toss out were materials related to teaching mosaics.  No, I won’t be hauling buckets of rocks around for a hundred or so kids a day to make crafts with.  Nor will I be driving about five hundred miles or so to teach the craft in Maryland, like I used to do every summer.  Who knew that the teaching summer of 2011 would be my last?
My new utility room has less cluttered shelves with labeled boxes.  It amazes me how little time it takes to find something.  But whatever happened to my box of copper carbonate?  Maybe that will be revealed, too, when my unused studio is cleared out.  In the mean time, I took my line drawing of a Japanese enamel and made a black and white illustration from it.  A rodent in a kimono sings to the moon about still being alive and in the world.

An Unusual Perspective on the Exhibition of Persian Miniatures, "The Book of Kings" at Princeton University Art Museum

The Princeton University Art Museum is exhibiting an extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime view of Persian miniatures.  The Peck Shanameh, or Book of Kings, is on view until January 24.  My husband and I were fortunate to be able to see this on our trip to New Jersey this winter.  Our intention was to take in this exhibition,  the exhibition of Japanese art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Museum of German Art, and everything else we could feast our eyes on in one week.
I mentioned in my previous post that illness cut my ambitious museum going plans to two museum visits instead of three or four.  But there were other reasons for going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Princeton University Art Museum and nowhere else.  The Peck Shanameh simply required two visits.  One reason for my second visit was the fact that there would be no future opportunities to study this manuscript.  The recently restored pages will be bound again in a carefully preserved volume after the exhibition closes.  I wanted to make use of the available fleeting opportunity and take my time to study these manuscript pages, making notes and a few sketches.
I only made two drawings at the museum because the original paintings in the Peck Shanameh were so detailed and refined that getting the gist of that in my notebooks took a long time.  Using an overlay of hard graphite on soft graphite, I tried to capture some of the qualities of ink line drawing and a gradation of ink washes.  To make these drawings my own, however, I revised compositions, leaving out details and inserting others.  In the additions and subtractions,   I started drawing figures and reattaching their limbs, and took hunters off of their steeds.
 I selected my favorite horse from this collection of paintings, booted the rider off of it, and made a drawing of the horse alone.  This required inventing a design for the saddle as the rider in the Persian miniature was hiding those details in the painting by sitting in said saddle.   No problem.  Artists generally aren’t constrained by art history anyway and this artist has a long streak of irreverence running down her spine.  I call this drawing, “Persian Steed Awaiting His Vegetarian Rider.”

Father of Summer and Winter

Last summer, while visiting my father, I made sketches of him as he snoozed in a chair on his front porch.  After finishing the first sketch, I changed my position to start the second from a different point of view.  Halfway through the second sketch, my father got up to use the restroom and did not return to modeling.  Being 90 years of age earns one the right to refuse any task at hand, even sitting, so I did not press him to sit any longer.
   My husband and I had to return to South Carolina shortly thereafter so the second drawing remained incomplete...until this winter.  While visiting with my father again, I managed to complete this second drawing by sitting near him at a distance and angle similar to where I was when I made the summer drawing.  I had to change the chair to an indoor chair and add a long sleeve jacket.  With these minor adjustments I had my delayed second drawing finished.
Both of these sketches were the result of my  having been forcibly slowed down.  Last summer my husband and I were staying with my father but going out during the day for forays in to Philadelphia or New York to see the kind of art exhibitions not readily available in South Carolina, or even the Southeast in general to be truthful.  Those day trips ended for me when I sprained my ankle.  Homebound, I sketched an exotic tree in my father’s front yard and began to make drawings of him resting in his chair. 
This winter we stayed in New Jersey with my father once again and my husband and I made trips out to see friends,  visit New York museums and the Princeton University Art Museum.  That all went well until I caught bronchitis.  Then it was a stay at home trip again for me, spent chatting with my dad during his waking hours and repairing to the little guest bedroom to read and finish drawings.  Despite the bronchitis, I was more alert while completing my second drawing than I was when I made the first one.  There was a model of a wooden house on the table next to the chair in which my father was sitting.  It made for a poignant inclusion into the composition, as my father's profession was building and renovating houses.
In reviewing these drawings, it becomes clear to me that I should take some more time to be with my father.  It would probably be wise to schedule more  rest time  and take care to see the beautiful in the every day; a tree that evokes an image of a cyclops, a man at rest.   One should do these things before a body is relegated to do so by getting orthopedic injuries. 

Arranging the Lives of the Sonic Hedgehogs

For most of 2015, I traded art work for skills.  The most valuable of these was the editing and formatting of my illustrated manuscripts.  2015 saw the completion of four illustrated books, one for a client’s sonnets, and three of my own.  These are now at the ready for submitting to potential publishers. 
All this while, I did double duty; polishing and revising the text and illustrations while creating art work to pay for the graphic design and PDF formatting.  Payment began with paintings and collages but ended at the brink of entering 2016 with a series of small sculptural rattles that I had named “sonic hedgehogs.”  My graphic designer became quite enamored with them - in particular as a grouping.  She made the salient observation that I should consider always exhibiting them as a group, as they made more of an impact that way.  So we agreed that my final payment for her services would be a group of these zoomorphic rattles. 
I had fun with the project, making creatures with overly large gaping mouths so that the clicking sound of the bead placed inside would be clear.  I placed them in a variety of positions so that they would make a dynamic group.
When I finally made the trip up north to see family, friends, relatives and colleagues, I had a substantial group of sonic hedgehogs in tow.   My friend and graphic design specialist had a tough time choosing just 15 of them (my rough calculation of a trade) so we agreed that she would take some extras and we would work out the difference later.  After her picks, her husband started playing with the rattles like little toy soldiers.  Each compilation told a different story.  I discovered the same story telling potential when I had earlier played with different configurations of the statues myself earlier - usually in a parade arrangement and always with the standing cat at the head of the parade.   My friend began to arrange them almost as chess pieces.   But my friend’s husband was particularly creative with arrangements.  The final arrangement was a choral group with a standing cat as a conductor, a small frog in a lily pad like bowl as a counter tenor, hippo-like creatures as bases and baritones.  The extra cats became an audience.  My friend and her husband were right.  These things made much more sense as an interactive group than stand alone miniature sculptures. 
Perhaps I am reading too much in to how different people arranged these little sculptures.  But I do wonder what our preference for arrangements reveals about the way our minds work.  My parades with a lead animal might be a clue to my plodding way of doing things and a linear way of thinking.  I’m not very good at multi-tasking.  Am I boring?  My friend’s chess piece approach with symmetrical arrangements might be a clue to her mathematical approach to thinking through designs - which is why she is so good at graphic design, editing, quilting and generally  getting things done in an organized manner.   I am not sure what to conclude about arranging the animals in sections by tribal anatomy but I could certainly see the logic of it.  The way different people chose to make arrangements almost inspires me to make a few more sets of these things just to do more experiments.
What was particularly impressive, however, about the creative use my friend had for my sculptures, was a series of children’s stories that they engendered.  My friend surprised me with a complete manuscript of nicely written stories about just about every rattle - making each one come alive with a distinct personality.  Impressive that the sculptures of an artist with a rather dull-witted approach to their use could inspire such creativity in others...the ex-teacher lives on.