Pinch Pot Results

Finally I got to see my pinch pots. I took pictures of them (not good ones, though) and spent about an hour organizing and taking notes. Here are my notes on three of the pots:

This is Pot #3.

The type of clay was Dillo White. The inside glaze is Rutile Green, the outside is TC White.

Notes: Rutile Green is splotchy. TC White is spotty, probably because of grog (looks kinda cool though).



This is Pot #4

Also Dillo White. Inside is Rutile Blue, outside is Celadon.

Notes: Rutile Blue as really thick and looks awful. Celadon is muddy with grog spots.



This is Pot #12

The clay is Balcones. The glaze is Shino.

Notes: Shino looks shiny and oily. Purposeful variations of thickness creates interesting rusty effect. Emphasizes cracks.


Most of the pots look all right. I was pretty surprised by some of the colors since the labels were kind of misleading. For example, the glaze labeled "TX Blue Green" is actually only blue green on porcelain. The rest of the time, it's dark brown with weird blue streaks. At first I really didn't like it, but I guess if you use it knowing it will look dark brown with blue streaks, it can be okay. Another blue, "Winiker Blue," looks like spotted poop on everything except porcelain, in which case it is a pretty slate blue.

Glazing might be my favorite part of this whole thing, except that I really don't get to it until weeks after I create my object. It's kind of hard to be that farsighted when you're used to the instant gratification of painting.

Productivity, hooray!

It's better when you have a plan in mind.

Today in the studio I made:

6 ramekins
2 tart things (like ramekins, but bigger, like for dinner tarts)
4 small jars for hanging
1 vase

The vase:



I like it. It's pretty small, about 5" high.

I was there for about three hours, so I feel pretty productive. I'm going back tomorrow to work on the giant nose if I have the motivation for it.

I can't wait until we start the wheel. Hopefully I will pick it up without too much ridiculous frustration and then I can make some mugs and bowls and stuff that aren't totally lopsided and strange.

Project Resolutions

JewishGuy, my boyfriend, is much more practical than me and would therefore probably be a lot better at ceramics than me if he tried it. He is focused on making useful things and how to make them, and that is good (to make useful things). I wanted that to be my focus for this class, but because I got these "assignments" I was totally caught up in making artsy things and was frustrated beyond belief. I even went to the studio yesterday and got so pissed off, I couldn't think of anything and my clay started drying... I made a vase and two little pitchers because I just needed to make something before the clay dried and was wasted.

Today JewishGuy and I sat down to figure out what I was going to make for the rest of my assignments because this is ridiculous. I need to just think of something and make it. The Shabbat lamp is on its way to being finished and looks good - I had a clear vision and I made it and it will be useful (hopefully).

Here are two of my new ideas that I sketched on the computer:

These are hanging herb jars for my "Off the Wall" project. Hanging jars sounded so boring so I didn't really want to make them, however if I make small hanging jars for herbs, that could be cool and useful.

The idea is that they would be small jars with a string tied around them that could easily be hung on any kind of hook. You could either put a hook in the wall or use an over-the-door hook to hang it on a door (like our kitchen pantry). Then each jar would have enough space for water at the bottom and some fresh herbs that would stick out of the top. In the picture I drew dill, rosemary and basil. This would save us counter space, as when we have fresh herbs we stick them in a cup on the counter that can easily be spilled.

I haven't decided if the jars should literally be tied on a string or if I should put a metal hook around the jars that would then be attached to the string somehow. (I would like an excuse to go back to the junk store, I will have to relate how fun that was when I went last week).

Another project was the "Self Portrait" project. JewishGuy suggested making pancakes first, since I LOVE pancakes (chocolate chip pancakes to be exact). But I was kind of against it, not to mention it would kind of be an ugly object. Then he suggested making a giant nose with my nose ring. I really like this idea.

One of my first projects in printmaking (my favorite) was to do a self portrait, so obviously I did this giant picture of myself, emphasizing my nose ring. My nose ring is really important to me, having the hoop is especially important - I had to take the hoop out for a while when I worked in the Jewish community, and I have to say I felt really saddened by it. As soon as I put the ring back in, I felt much better. This was also, coincidentally, the day after I quit my last - and worst - job, so who knows.

Anyway, making a giant nose also has other implications. Besides the whole deal with my nose ring, which I got almost 7 years ago and still love, it also brings up issues of being Jewish and how I never really feel like I fit in with the community. I don't "look" Jewish. Nobody ever thinks I'm Jewish by looking at me. Even if I dress like a frummie, I think only if I were in Israel would people think I was Jewish. In high school, if someone tried to guess my religion, invariably they would guess Catholic. I guess this comes from my mom's side of the family, with my grandma who has bright red hair (still, even at 94, it's pretty red and she doesn't dye it). Because of her hair and her very, very Irish-sounding name, she was often mistaken as Irish when she was young - the joke was on them when she opened her mouth and Yiddish came out!

I also don't really feel like I fit in with The Community. I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that, though. This feeling has pretty much persisted throughout my experience, wherever I've lived or gone to school - that I fit in with the others who feel they don't "fit in," and make my own community of odd Jews.

Anyway, so definitely doing a giant nose, and then as I drew it JewishGuy suggested I make it into a vase so at least it can be useful. Good idea. Very practical. ;-)

In Memory

(From my trip to Israel, 2006)

Class Time Well Spent

This was what my lecture about "Human Adjustment" looked like on February 19:



Preeeettttyy interesting. I used to do these kinds of doodles all the time - whole page documents with snippets of things I overhear, cartoons, designs, etc. It's a way to help me pay attention when I start falling asleep.

List #2: Cutest Boys

I'm watching Southpark right now and tonight's episode is directly related to NaBloPoMo. The girls make lists, and the list in question is the Cutest Boys list. It's arranged in cutest to ugliest.

1. Clyde
2. Token
3. Stan
4. Bradley
5. Jason
6. Leroy
7. Kenny
8. Tweek
9. Kevin
10. Jimmy
11. Butters
12. Craig
13. Timmy
14. Francis
15. Cartman
16. Kyle

Kyle is really upset because he is the ugliest, so he starts hanging out with the "ugly" kids. The funniest ugly kid is this kid Jamal (pronounced "yamal"), who makes me laugh every time they show him on TV:
I don't know why he's so funny, but something about him is so hilarious. Maybe I knew someone like him when I was in elementary school.

Anyway, Kyle gets his ex-girlfriend Wendy to help him figure out how he ended up on the bottom of the list, and it turns out it was a conspiracy to make Clyde the top of the list because his dad owns a shoe store in the mall. The girls thought if he was rated the cutest, they could justify dating him and he would woo them all by buying them free shoes.

Sorry this list was unrelated to art or anything I post about in my blog, but it's funny and related to the month's assignment.

The Repetitive Three-Dimensional Blues

I am having some problems with the ceramics class, emotionally and mentally. How do I work in three dimensions? It's really, really hard for me to wrap my head around it, so to speak. I don't know what to make, I don't know how to make what I want to make, and just the whole concept of being on a time limit is very, very intimidating. I am sure I've written about this before.

However, the worst part of this all is that next week is my mid-term review and I feel like I am so, so far behind and so, so lost. I am afraid he will sit down with me and say, you aren't doing enough work, and the work you are doing doesn't feel cohesive. And I will say, I am so totally lost, three dimensions is so, so hard for me, and clay is completely foreign to me! There is nothing more different from linoleum-cut printmaking than clay! And I will want to say, also you aren't very approachable and I need help help help! The one time I approached you, you brushed me off, and so I have been trying to go alone and have been terribly, terribly uninspired.

I have been worried about this since Sunday, when I tried to go to the studio but got sidetracked due to the easily-distracted mindset of being uninterested, and then the same thing happened on Monday, and now I am avoiding it even more.

I almost just want to make a bunch of super-abstract slabs, like simple silhouettes and then glaze them and just do that. I have no idea what to do. I am so lost. I guess it's good that I will have the mid-term review soon so I can tell him in person that I am so lost and uninspired and unmotivated. Maybe I will go to the junk store tomorrow and pick up some things with interesting textures and try to build some clay off of that. I don't know - I am grasping at straws here!

Blah blah blah. I am feeling negative today because this is day 7 of my cold, I haven't been sleeping well and now I have to cancel my volunteering tomorrow (you can't go to the cancer clinic with a cold). BLAH, I say!

List #1: Things I Capture on Camera

My top ten most common subjects (other than me and my friends, since I won't post pictures of us on this blog) in no particular order:

1. Food, especially food that I make or eat at home.


Thanksgiving Dinner

2. Funny signs.


Christmas Rejects


3. Funny random things


Giant Purple Godzilla Speaks Spanish


4. My cat being cute


Sleeping Like a Human

5. Trees


Construction Backdrop

6. Interesting people


Yellow Mime

7. Sunsets


Sunset in the Harbor

8. Interesting/artsy scenes without people


View in Rhode Island

9. Animals


Mommy and Baby

10. Nature-y things that look cool


In the Caves

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How was that for my first NaBloPoMo list?

(I should add that none of these photos are color-corrected - this is just how they looked when I downloaded them from the camera)

Underwater Basket Weaving

Somehow, this mythological subject has become synonymous with frivolous undergraduate majors. And yet, I have always kind of been interested in weaving baskets, especially under water.

OK I lied about the under water part. I actually am afraid of large bodies of water to some degree - it all comes from that time when I was little and I almost drowned because a big wave hit me, I fell under, and every time I tried to stand up another wave hit me. It was pretty scary. Now I don't go in above my chest. I'm okay in swimming pools and the Dead Sea, but otherwise I stay where I can stand comfortably and out of rough waves. Surfing is Right. Out.

Anyway, so I decided to make some baskets out of copper wire I have lying around. I thought maybe I could use it in one of my ceramics projects where I have to have something hanging off the wall. My first attempt was kind of bad, so I didn't take pictures. Here's my second attempt:





Not so bad. It doesn't look as sturdy as it is. I am pretty confident that if something were inside it, it wouldn't fall out as long as the basket were held at the proper angle (ie: hung from a wall). It's kind of like a cornucopia or a sconce.

Weaving a basket out of wire is very, very difficult. First of all, the poking - oh, the poking. My poor tips of fingers that don't have any sensation anyway due to years of piano lessons were being poked and poked and poked. I used pliers but I was still poked. Second of all, the kitty thought the wires were wiggling as part of some kind of game, so I had a kitty batting at the wires as I tried to weave in and out and in and out. Thirdly, the wires are very stubborn and wouldn't make a nice, tight basket like I had imagined and I ended up with this object that looks like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

Chicago Pictures

Chicago skyline in The Bean!

Of course I spent some time doing some touristy things, so we went to the Bean, which is this giant mirror shaped like some kind of bean. I don't know what the real name for it is.

Also, Chicago has some other strange artsy things lying around in random places, which I liked. Here's a picture of a weird giant face that in the summer spews water. The face moves, it's actually a screen that changes faces every once in a while, and sometimes the face smiles or laughs.



I just like this picture because the face looks like part of the skyline. It kind of reminds me of one of those commercials where they are advertising they "get more bars," it's like here are the more bars and one of them is a giant man face.