Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Very slowly finishing this pot...

I've had this waiting in my basement for a few months. Think I'm finally ready to finish it. Just deciding on final details.



The whitish stuff you see on the pot is grainy salty build up from weeks of spraying water on it to keep it from drying out. I've polished it with fine sandpaper so it's fairly smooth now.

Little monsters

Forgot my camera so here are some cell phone pictures of some new little things I'm making:



My brother says they look kind of like viruses.



I plan on making more of these. I'll try to remember to take my camera and take pictures step by step. These spheres are created by making two pinch pot bowls and sticking them together by scoring and slip and a coil to bind them together. I let them get leather hard so they'll hold their shape while I handle them and then add the spikes and protrusions. I've poked a tiny hole in the bottom of each of these to allow air to escape when they're fired. If I didn't, they'd explode because the superheated air expands and has to get out somehow!

You can see I've left the surface a little rough, especially on the smaller ones. I thought the uneven texture added character but maybe it's just sloppy. I'm really just trying to work things out with these and in future have a more refined product. I plan to just stain some of these and experiment with glaze on others and then see what works best.

Just trying to do something different that's fun so it doesn't feel like work going into the studio. There's really no point to these things other than just to experiment and have fun with creativity and not try to create something important.