Pottery and Ceramics - Fall 2012
Taught by Ceramist, Sarah Hahn, this course taught us the basics of creating pottery and ceramics throughout various techniques, some of which included pinch, coiled, and slab pots, wheel-throwing, glazing, and bisquing.
Pinch Pottery
Just like the name implies, this type of ceramics involves pinching clay into a shape. Although the end-result may seem crude, this method gives the pottery an organic quality to it. This cup has an imprint of my shoe's sole on it, which gave it the zig-zag pattern.
Coiled Pottery
This type of pottery involves wrapping coils of clay on top of each other and then smoothing them together. It is an excellent method of creating an organic shape, and this cup has a fossil carved into it.
Here's what the cup looked like when it was in the bisque stage and had no glaze:
Slab Pottery
This method of pottery requires you to create slabs of clay that can be used to fabricate geometric designs, much like the way you make gingerbread houses. The only concern with slab pottery is that it can look flat and simple, which may not be a bad thing. This first cup is designed like a hispanic ware, and the second cup has a square bottom and a circular top.
Wheel-Thrown Pottery
A classic method of pottery making, this method is actually difficult. A single air bubble in your clay can ruin a vase that you spent hours making. The first set of images are a small tea set, which the saucer was created with the slab method.
These set of cups had to meet a height requirement and various glazing patterns.
And these images show the different angles of a cup that has my hand imprint glazed on it.
Hollow-Core Pottery
Some ceramists create a sculptural piece of clay, then proceed to hollow out the sculpture so that they can bisque it in a kiln without it exploding. My first ceramic was a 12in tall vase that was intended to hold a tall wild flower and show off its stems and leaves. In hindsight, using the slab method would have been much easier, but this method gave it an organic quality.
Here's what the vase looked liked with a glaze that hasn't been fired in a kiln:
The other hollow-core ceramic I made was a skull of an Eastern Island Monolith.
Here are some images of the skull cup as I was hollowing it out and the bisque stage. I felt like a dentist when I was creating the teeth and a brain surgeon when I hollowed it out.
Carving Exercise
Around this time was Halloween, which everyone was given an opportunity to carve a ceramic pumpkin for extra credit. I opted out, and I used that time to create a mock dinosaur head of a raptor. The first image shows a basic carving, and the next image shows the detailed version.
Final Project
We had free reign over our last ceramic project, and I chose to make a traditional-style mask carving. Using the hollow-core method, I designed this mask to resemble a goat/ram, a creature that is often represented as stubborn. To reflect this quality, I made the eyes narrow to represent the tunnel-vision that stubborn people often posses. The color scheme is designed to look like adobe and other natural minerals.
Here are some images that show the design process. This first image shows the bisque stage before I applied oil paint. When I started to apply oil paint, I may have gotten a little on my hands and I may have forgotten that it is not water-soluble.
And here is the Baule Ram Mask that I drew inspiration from:
