Altering form

I was looking at akar design for different ceramic artists to look up and found several that interested me. I selected these images because they all heavily altered forms which is my current area of interest.

Started Thinking Again

This week I looked up images of work that was thrown on the wheel and altered, because this is a direction I want to go. I found several things that fit this description, but not to the extent I was hoping for. These pieces still were to close to the circle shape from the wheel. I thought maybe Chris Gustin's work had what I was looking for, and after researching his methods I found that they were coil built.

So I decided the best thing to do is look for images of my friend Eric Hoefer's work, because what he was my first inspiration to start using the wheel as a tool. I only had the chance to start working like this for about a year before coming to KCAI and I have so many ideas to try out as well as successfully recreate the pieces that failed.

Injury Leads to frustration

Recently I have injured my wrist and have not been able to work with clay at all. Even typing this blog is painful. Because of this I have been unable to explore my ideas and so this week there are no images. Even just thinking about what to do is a challenge when I can't physically execute an experiment, and now I am so beyond pissed off that the only way to make myself feel better is to try and just not think about ceramics at all. I know that this may not be the best plan of action, but it is the best thing I could come up with. Hopefully I can come up with something more constructive next week.

The entire object

I have been working with the idea of amphitheater seating as a jumping off point in my bowls, but now after cutting apart and reassembling these forms I have found another problem. I forgot about the exterior of the bowl. As if it was automatic I finished it like any other bowl; in other words it looks as if the pieces were never separate. So now I have started thinking about different ways in which finish them. Only two ideas have come to mind so far and that is to either keep the seam visible or overlap the edges.

Not just spirals anymore

In my investigation of spirals I came across the work of Katherine Procter. I enjoy the way she used many spirals put together creating an image of overlapping spirals of different sizes. It was an idea that I had not thought of doing.

In the past few weeks I have been using spirals for the basis of my designs and recently in a conversation they were referred to as concentric circles. I had an idea of what this meant so just to verify it I looked up images. Not only was this design concentric circles, but also another form I had used several times in the past that was based on a ziggurat. This got me thinking that the spiral is a bit of a narrow subject and I should use the idea of concentric circles as the jumping off point for my work. Although with a bowl I found that it could be difficult to incorporate this idea of the ziggurat so I started to think of seating in amphitheaters which more or less are an inverted ziggurat. Thinking about this has opened a whole new realm of ideas for me.

Spirals

In the past few weeks I have been focusing on using a spiral faceting technique and so now I have started looking at shells. I am creating this design that occurs naturally in sea shells. I am not trying to make shells but, rather take what interests me the most about them and use it as a design element in my work.

My Inpiration

Warren Mackenzie was the first inspiration I had and is the reason I started making pots.

I met him at the age of five on a family vacation which was my first exposure to hand made ceramics.

I always enjoyed the way Brad Schweiger faceted his work and it inspired me to start faceting my own work

When I facet forms I am always thinking about the way rock formations look and I try to imitate this surface