I was going to cover my build of an art-deco style horse head, but I thought it better to be a bit more chronological to start off my blogging (although, in contradiction, I have started with recent images because they are more likely to be attention grabbing in the previews)
Beginning at the end then:
Coral Form, 2011, White Earthenware
So lets get going with some sketches, the bare bone origins. This is how this line of work all started:
'Sea slug', Feb 2004
... hmm. I had completely forgotten how this originated, but I think it's self explanatory now. My note is interesting: 'thrown cones'. I never tried to do that but I know it would have been very tricky getting them into a long and tapered form - not to say curved as well. How I eventually achieved this... well, I'll at least show the end result if not describe the minute detail as this post progresses.
And here the 'sea slug' concept is given an improved treatment on a sheet of A2 (March 2004). A useful way to spend a lunchtime or three.
My pottery tutor at the time - Ed Gould - told me I could use some sort of tubey, foamy things (otherwise known as pipe lagging) to make a former. In the event, my method was very different, and owed much more to a happy accident and my old technical drawing skills. But it was three years before I finally made one for the final project of my Foundation degree.
Note - during an earlier degree unit titled 'Balance and Tension' I got very interested in the concept of 'unbalanced' shapes. In particular, forms that would not be stable without some counterbalance. The Sea Slug formed a mental precursor to this idea.
So I had to find a way to make a former to actually build the thing. The photo below ably shows the stages of construction, starting with a cardboard core. If you ever scored a curve on piece of heavy paper or card, and then folded it to make a dune shape, that was the germ behind the technique employed to make these. The cross-section, perpendicular to the curved axis, is equilateral from top to bottom, each card disk has a equi-triangle cut out (all various sizes of course), and threaded as shown. I only needed to fix each disk with tape. I then wrapped the whole thing in plastic, followed by plaster bandage and a final smothering of plain plaster.
Finished plaster former, and alongside, the core of a miniature version I never skinned.
A CG visualisation, refining my original design. I made a number of design sketches exploring the small-cone-on-big-cone idea, seeing what other combinations would work based on the one basic shape, settled on making one alternate. I considered using porcelain for its translucency, and I did make a small test piece, but on advice I settled on white earthenware, which is much easier for hand-builds. The complicated technical part was over with, or so I thought. But I kind of already knew that the join between the main sections needed some precision, I needed a 'true shape' development, solved (or improvised, more like) by using more of those old fashioned technical drawing skills.
I think I spent a week making the forms. With relief I did my final smoothing on the joints, said 'that's it, all done', and relaxed. Except relaxing was not on the cards. A few minutes after I sat down on the sofa, my back went into the most excruciating spasms. Agony. I'd been aware of tension buildup, muscle ache, having to stand, hunching over with arms lifted, but never ever was I expecting to get tortured by this project when I was done with it...
I was fortunate to be working at a school while I was studying (part-time, both), with access to a kiln. I wanted to make the first form as big as I could, and it comes in at 55 centimeters long having been calculated to fit (while green) in a 60cm space (the max diagonal of the kiln).
#1, white earthenware, 2007
#2, white earthenware, 2007
I experimented with moving light sources to light my creations. I was waving two Maglites from different directions, from below, generating very surreal, shifting shadow casts. I seriously wanted to make a rig with reciprocating arms with bright LED bulbs, but it never got past this improvised test.
The two forms ended up in a display cabinet at the end of year show (Eastgate House, Rochester). Not really what I wanted, but I wasn't bothered at the time. That's because I planned and made two other installations, building further on curved cones. I will talk about these in my 'Spiky' post another time.
So I come to the end of my first full post. Ah. Almost forgot to mention the Coral Form right at the top. Made this last year, the main body made exactly the same way as the forms above. The added 'extrusions' are another matter, being made with my Spiky method. Stay tuned - follow me, bookmark this site, etc. I will write about that, eventually.
~J~
P.S.
Last year, a very knowledgeable chap named Simeon told me that cones were perhaps the hardest shape to make in clay. He's not wrong.
P.P.S.
In the near-ish future I want to take the method I developed into an extreme form, and build an 'Id's Talon'. I'll let you hazard a guess as to what that might be in the image below. And top marks if you understand my reference ;)
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