Saturday, November 25, 2017

2017 Progress Report: September

Sorry this post took so long. After my art show ended earlier this month, I got a little lazy and decided to take a break from pretty much everything. I've been playing a lot of Friday the 13th lately. Now it is time to play catch up with my posts.

September started out a little slow and then sped up when I found out that I would be having a show on the week of Halloween. In some ways, this show was one of my easier shows to plan for since I had several projects that were intended to be finished for my last show that I couldn't finish in time. I first started out by doing some unfinished work from the summer involving polishing work on some ceramic pieces. Two of the ceramic pieces were going to be for my show while the others will go up for sale someday. Next, I finished my piece Anathema, a project that missed my last show by a few days. Then I started on a new ceramic piece that was a restart of a failed piece from earlier this year.

This is all I have for right now. I will continue catching up with everything over the next few weeks.

9/5/17: I finished polishing this piece. It turned out great.

9/5/17: I finished polishing this piece. Just like my other saggar piece, this also turned out great.

9/5/17: This is a piece I plan on selling. The polishing work turned out alright, though the piece is a little darker than I wanted it to be.

9/5/17: This is another polished saggar piece that I want to sell.

9/5/17: Compared to the previous two saggar pieces, I like this one the best.

9/5/17: This is the first of three pit fired egg pieces that I plan on selling. The polishing with these pieces turned out great.

9/5/17: This is the second egg piece.

0/5/17: This is the third egg piece, though it does have some problems from faulty construction that I'll have to fix later.

9/12/17: It didn't take too long to build this, though the bulges stick out more than what I originally intended.

9/26/17: This piece had been in development since 2008. I finally finished it.

9/26/17: The bottom of Anathema.

9/27/17: I did some glazing work. I managed to find a way to get a lot of glazes on here without overdoing it. It had to be carefully planned.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

The Weekly Report: 10/15-10/21

This week was yet another week where I got an extra day off from work. This gave me a lot of much needed time. During this week, I would finally complete a project called Black Widow, a project that originally started 12 years ago, went through development hell, then suddenly picked up steam about a year ago. A lot of other things happened which I'll explain in a bit, but the completion of Black Widow was definitely the highlight.

10/17/17: On this day, I was working on a project which was later named Autumn Decay. It is a mixed media project that is shaped like a leaf. I'm pretty sure I mentioned something about this project in a previous Weekly Report, but I'm too lazy to check. Anyway, I had finally finished getting all the canvas glued on and I managed to get the gesso work done. Aside from that, I was also firing four of my mask pieces via the raku kiln while glazing the one piece that fell behind the others. They all turned out good enough to the point where additional firing was not required. What was also as equally amazing was that despite using the same glaze combinations and being fired at the same time, they all turned out differently from one another. This was most likely because certain ones were removed from the kiln before others.

10/18/17: I continued to work on Autumn Decay. I applied the first layer of the extra coarse pumice gel that I had used on past projects. I also glued wood pieces to the backs of four of my mask pieces and another ceramic wall piece that I would eventually name Heritage. These wood pieces would eventually be used to screw hanging hooks into the pieces.

10/19/17: Today was all about getting the piece Black Widow done. I wanted it done. I was getting sick of working on it. I just wanted it out of the way so I could focus on the other projects that needed to get done for my upcoming show. Since I'm not showing pictures right now, I have to try and explain the unusual situation I was in. Black Widow was a mixed media pieces that a black and white charcoal and pastel drawing that is framed around sculpture work that was done using fiber paste. The sculptural part needed to be painted. I normally finish the drawing before I complete the painting. However, on that Thursday, I couldn't. The sculpture/ceramic studio at the college had a fan that I needed for the paint to dry. The problem is that studio was closing by 8pm. The drawing and painting studio would still be opened, but that studio had no working fan. This mean, I had to work backwards and finish the painting first and the drawing second. The result ended up leading to dust from the charcoal and pastel getting on the still damp paint which affected how the piece as a whole turned out. I nearly finished everything before the day was out.

10/20/17: In the early hours of the morning, I applied the polymer medium to Black Widow and finally completed a project that I first started back in 2005. I was also able to apply the first layer of pumice gel to the back of Autumn Decay.

That's all for this delayed Weekly Report. I know I've been way behind on my posts. I apologize, but I spent just about all of October preparing for my how I had recently. There will be a lot more posts coming very soon.