Scribble 1

Every week I work on one scribble drawing for 2 hours in my Artist in Residence art therapy group. This is the scribble from the first week... the purple thing in the middle emerged when I was afraid nobody was going to show up to the group, so it appeared early on. The detail on the purple part was also the last thing I did before the group was over.

Foggy Chicago

The other night I was walking home from the studio and this was what the world looked like... Everyone who was out that night was describing it as walking into a lame b-movie horror flick or whatever. I couldn't help thinking how pretty everything looked.

I took a lot more pictures than these two but I think these are my favorite.

Updates on my life

A few updates:

- I broke my toe in two places and it hurts to move around so I didn't go to ceramics this week and therefore don't have anything new to show right now in that arena :(
- My computer completely died and I have ordered a new one, but this means you won't see pictures of other work (thesis-related work what-WHAAAT) until that shows up and I have time to work on a new blog post.

I have a need to tell everyone about these things because I can't believe both happened at the same time. So there we have it.

Karate AND Friendship

My brother gave me the Master of Karate and Friendship Award so now I have to perform certain tasks:

" FUCK the rules and just write whatever the fuck ya want. Pass it on to how many ever ya want. Once it's passed on, your in control of making the fucking rules up.

So here are my rules: list 12 things you master, but only the even numbers. Post a picture of your favorite martial arts movie, and pass it on to twice as many people as capitalized words in the title. "

I like his rules, so I'll use them.

2) I am also a master at procrastination. This is evidenced by working on this post even though I absolutely positively decided to go to bed at 11pm (since tomorrow is my 9 hour day at work).

4) Starting new projects. OHHHH the projects I start! Oh such projects. They get started and they seem so fun. How fun are they? They're so fun. Like my new thesis I started two weeks ago and that is due in a month. HOW MUCH FUN IS THAT!

6) Trying to be funny and sarcastic but coming off as not joking so I have to say "I'm just kidding" or say it in a really really exaggerating sarcastic manner in order for people to know I am joking.

8) Futzing on the internet for so long that I lose track of time and don't work on my thesis or blink enough.

10) Talking about being Jewish ... basically all the time. ALL THE TIME.

12) Hurting myself in new and interesting ways, as demonstrated by tonight: jumped up to put something on a high-up shelf (it sucks being short) and my pants pocket got caught on the bottom cabinet's handle and I got jerked back to the floor, breaking/spraining my co-captain toe (the one next to the big captain toe). So that turned my evening into a mess.

Favorite martial arts movie is The Shaolin Drunken Monk made in 1982, that's right, a claaaaassic. I think this is the one I remember... I only saw it once, but it was amazing, and there was this little monk who lived in the hills who could rationalize ANYTHING. That means, according to the rules I agreed to, I have to tag 8 people. I don't know if I have 8 people who blog regularly and who also read this blog so I'll freely hand out this award to anyone who likes martial arts movies enough to have a favorite one :) Please let me know if you tag yourself for this post, I'd like to see your mastery.

PS: My brother said he was master of his domain. I don't know if he remembers that Seinfeld episode very well...

I'm an ugly teapot, short and stout...

On Friday I created this little number here:


Well, it's hard to make something that's supposed to look like something. It looks like a teapot but will it eventually be one? Time will tell. It still has to be bisque fired and glazed and then fired again. The blue on the top is an engobe which I think is just a different colored clay that's been watered down and you can paint it on kind of like a glaze except you do it when the clay is still wet-ish.

There are four other pieces I worked on tonight but they're still wet and I have other things to show you, so moving on...

Thirteen pieces ready to be glazed and then sent to the kiln! I think I will glaze this Friday morning.


Well you can only see twelve in the picture above because one of them is hiding inside a bigger bowl.

Now I will break down these piles into smaller piles. The only one I'm not picturing is the wide bowl at the bottom of the middle pile... it just didn't make it into the pictures I took tonight.

Here are three smaller pieces:


One is kind of a mug with a teeeeeny tiny handle, which you can't even stick your finger through. It's more for decoration than practical use, but it is decent looking. The little cup in the front has an avocado engobe on the bottom. It looks really pale but I don't know what it will look like once it's been through the kiln.

Two larger pieces:


I felt that these two were too awkward to be bowls, the shape just was too weird. So I cut holes in the bottom and now these are flower pots, perfect for planting little plants :)

Medium-sized pieces:


Three of these bowls will be decent cereal bowls, maybe. The other two are weird. Most of these bowls are really heavy, too, because I was timid with trimming the bottom and they are heavy down there.

Two large pieces:



A bowl and a vase, yay! I like the shape of that vase. I made another one with a similar shape and gave it a similar engobe treatment, too, except instead of avocado (pictured here), I made it blue.

So there you have it... thirteen pieces to glaze, that should take about 2-3 hours, depending on whether I make my own glazes or use the pre-mixed ones in the studio.

Yes! Glaze recipes are my new OCD hobby. I get to calculate things over and over again for no reason. I am terrible at math but it doesn't matter if my calculations are wrong so it's okay! Maybe I will post some glaze recipes here along with pictures of pieces with those glazes. Look for that in an upcoming post...

Cabbage Landscape

Artist-in-Residence Group

Right now at my internship I am running a group that is kind of in the "Artist-in-Residence" style of art therapy groups. I sit in the room and make art for two hours and invite people to come in from the drop-in space to join me.

Today in class we made art about a type of group that we run and then talked about it. I kind of like the art piece that came out of this process. So here is my representation of artist-in-residence art groups:


I'm the blue figure at the bottom of the blue circle creating/existing in the blue space. Potential group members are the other figures who pop in and out of the space. I made it as an interactive piece so the figures can actually pop in and out by pulling little tabs stuck to their feet.

Close-up of the figure of me and one representing a potential group member:


The cool thing about the artist-in-residence style of group is that it kind of opens up the art room to the participants, so maybe they will feel like they can come into the art room at other times to work even if you're not there. It rests firmly in the "art as therapy" end of the spectrum of art therapy.

Glazed and Fired

Ten pieces came back from the kiln this week!


Last Monday I went to the studio and spent three hours there, finishing some larger (wet) pieces and then glazing these ten things for this week's fire. I had no idea how they would come out. The dark brown is Temoku, the light brown is Gold Shino and the lighter white-ish color was supposed to be some type of blue.



Up close with Temoku and dripped over the blue... this is my favorite glaze design of the ten.



Close-up of some of the bowls. You can see on the left that I really soaked the bowl in the Shino, which is why it's all bubbly like that.



Close-up of the handle of the tea cup I made... it was my first handle. Other forays into handle-making haven't been much more successful.



A stack of all of the bowls with a pen for size comparison. JewishGuy says I should use an iPhone or an iPod, since that is the official size comparison object nowadays, but I needed to use this picture also for my grandma who has no idea what size an iPhone is.

Anyway, as you can tell these are pretty small bowls. One of these bowls is large enough to be a cereal bowl. My next batch should be much larger.

The Wheel Deal

Woo!


I'm actually making things! WHAAAAAAAT....


These last pieces are fresh off the wheel. My teacher told me to just leave the crap on the bottom until the piece is leather hard and then carve a nice bottom out. So these will sit here probably until Friday morning. The top ones I finished tonight.

YAY MAKING THINGS!

Self-care Stuffed Objects/Monsters

I started making felt stuffed objects/monsters in one of my classes as a self-care exercise. This was today's work:

From the front you can see a little pattern that, to me, symbolizes me with a bunch of pressure and stuff pushing down on me.


I decided to add cones to make it stand up like a table... no reason, just thought it would be interesting to sew on cones.


Then I turned it over and it kind of looks like a monster! One yellow eye, one peach eye, and an orange tail.


This monster is a little grouchy.

I love making these weird stuffed things! It's also fun to make sculptural pieces... this semester is all about the third dimension.