Grad School Adventures

Excuse the absence, I'm in grad school dontcha know? For the most part I have been posting updates to my Facebook page. I am not entirely certain why I haven't wanted to blog, except for the fact that I have been utterly and extremely busy.  The past four months have seen tons of changes, successes, failures, stress and excitement.  So, if you want to challenge yourself, move cross country and go to grad school!

College of Visual and Performing Arts, New Bedford Campus, Star Store. I'm up on the fourth floor in a huge studio space.

My space when I first moved into it in September.  I actually had a month in New Bedford without a car and no studio access.  I got a little depressed.  I rode the bus around, got a library pass, walked a lot and had a scare with bedbugs.  

The view out my studio window.

New Bedford is kind of an odd little town.  It's history is the fishing industry and mills and there tends to be a lot of poverty here.  There are pockets of wealth and pretty houses but to get to some really gorgeous scenery one needs to drive about five minutes out of town.  This is the harbor filled with fishing boats.  The area is known for it's historical ties to whaling and Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

Fall is truly setting in and one of my favorite places is this little park about fifteen minutes out of town on this little salt marsh pond.

One of the first things the grad students did after school started was take a trip to New York City to see some incredible exhibits at the museums.

So, I actually have been making work!  This is the result of my first soda firing and also what I set up for my first crits and reviews.  I was pretty pleased with how this came out in spite of the fact that I had a cold and was sick from an abscessed tooth.  I kept trying to figure out why I was so bleary eyed and delirious.  It was the hardest and felt like the longest firing I have every done!

Now I am busily trying to catch up and getting work made for finals.  Oh yeah, and there is that paper and presentation I have been seriously procrastinating.  See ya' later, I've got a kiln to check on!

Paperclay Vessel

All the beautiful flowers blooming and the early morning coolness on my front porch enticed me to stay home and experiment with some paperclay ideas.  In July I was able to work with ceramic installation artist, and professor at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Rebecca Hutchinson.  She was our last visiting artist in Clay as a Medium for Sculpture at CSU Summer Arts in Monterey, CA.  She taught us an amazing array of techniques for "breaking the rules" when working with clay. She taught us about the different kind of cellulose fibers to use and what kind of stuff to dip into paper clay slip.  She also showed us how to make durable, non-fired pieces and how to incorporate silkscreen and stencil use with colored slips for surface decoration.  It was a ton to cover in just three days.  If you ever get and opportunity to go to one of her workshops I would highly recommend it!

I thought I would start out simple with these little clay medallions I made by dropping dollops of paperclay onto a plaster slab to stiffen up.  Need more plaster slabs!  And minions to make these little cookies while I construct the forms.

The construction process was oh so delightful! I started the base out on an upturned bowl covered with paper.  I left it out in the sun to stiffen up and then took it off the mold, turned it over and started adding my cookie "shingles."  This stuff is amazing.  I love that you can add wet pieces to bone dry work.  It is also really easy to rehydrate areas with a spritz of water as the paper keeps the clay from weakening.

Day two.  You can see where the bottom section has dried and I continued shingling on the fairly dry rim.

I really wanted to continue and make the form even larger if it wasn't for a few crucial factors.  One, I ran out of slip!  Two, I needed to make the base thicker and better able to take the weight of the piece and not be topsy.  Since I started out with all these cookies of pretty uniform thickness there just isn't enough weight at the bottom.  I think the next one will have a thicker pinch or coil base to start working on. The last issue is transportation.  Oh yeah, when one does not have a kiln...  You get the idea.

I love how the interior looks like scales.  I might flip the cookies around on the next piece so the flat, scale-like surface is on the outside.  Now to figure out how I want to finish and fire this piece.  I am thinking of the soda kiln but not sure if it will fit.  I might need to make some smaller ones for that little kiln for sure.