TEAPOT

This is my teapot, it's been kilned three times so far. the first time someone touched it with black glaze on their fingers and it fired onto the purple, so i glazed it again with purple and added clear glaze. the clear didn't turn out well because it was watery and the lid chipped. it is now in the kiln with afew more coats of clear, hopefully it will workout and be lovely.

Chia Pets

The Chia Pet was invented in 1977. The clay body that it is made of is hollwed out and small grooves are scored into the surface. The moistened chia seeds (Salvia Columbaraie) produce a pasty thick texture that binds it to the clays surface. I decided to make me chia into a weird and unusual face. When i went in one day to finish off the scoring where my seeds would go, i found that somone had literally grabbed and smushed my chia's face. so i made my little brother a shark instead.

Cleaning!

Kristen and I worked in the kiln room this week, helping to clean both the shelves and the wall. We've yet to finish the wall, which still has terracotta clay plastered all over it, but hopefully we'll get a chance to finish that when we get back from spring break.

This is a picture of my tea pot, ready to be fired in the kiln. I decided to glaze it a nice dark purple, hopefully it'll be great, Im really excited to see how it turns out.

Raku

While searching to find raku peices, i found a site that contained pictures of "raku tea bowls". Raku tea bowls are often small and irregularly shaped bowls that were used for the purpose of drinking a powdered green tea during the Zen Buddhist tea ceremony. I've always been interested in this kind of thing. I hope that i can maybe make afew nice tea bowls to take home for my own green-tea-drinking ceremony.

Garden Ceramics

After searching the internet for some nice ceramic garden peices, I came about a website of an artist who was inspired by her mothers garden. She herself has her own garden and decorates it with handmade ceramic birdhouses, garden spheres, quote plaques and toadstool mushrooms. I've always had a fasination with mushrooms ever since I was little so i really enjoyed looking at how she incorporated the fungi into her art and as a part of her garden. Here's her website- (http://www.mymothersgarden.net/index.html)

Relief Surface

David Gamble, an artist from Plainfield, Indiana uses the technique of relief on the surface of his pieces. Like other artists, David finds art in many everyday objects. When he sees a manhole, he not only sees an entrance to the sewers, but an oportunity to make a releif wall hanging.

Ann Ruel uses both high and low relief to design her work. To transfer an image, she places the image (colored in with pencil) onto the peice and gently rubs the paper, which allows the image to be put onto the pot.