2015 Progress Report: September

September was an interesting month. My project that would eventually become The Tragic Forest would finally begin to make some progress while I would start on and complete the basic forms of four ceramic projects. What's interesting about these new ceramic pieces is that they deviate from what I've been doing with ceramics over the previous 2 years. These pieces would ignore texture and negative space in favor of smooth surfaces which were made with the intentions of being experimental work for both raku firings and sagger firings. That's right, I finally started working on sagger pieces. Also, I started doing something this month that you don't necessarily see in the pictures but I'm not ready to talk about that just yet.

9/2/15: This project which would later become known as The Vessel was the first of three projects that placed an emphasis on glazed surfaces over form. I did this so I could find just the right surface appearances that I could apply to future work that I plan to mass produce and sell. This is why for the sake of the glaze, this and the two other pieces like it lacked the texturing my work is usually known for.

9/9/15: By this point, the form is almost complete. I actually had a chunk of the bottom removed because something about it didn't feel right.

9/16/15: The basic form is finally complete. A challenge for this was balancing the back. Too much weight would have caused it to fall over. Most of the weight is at the bottom where the two pieces connect. This is because the bottom as a whole was too small and too light. While the piece can easily be knocked over by accident, it will still stand on it's own.

9/16/15: This project would eventually be known as Desolation. This was a continuation of the idea I was working with when working on The Vessel. A smoother surface was chosen instead of a textured surface. Unlike The Vessel, this has two connecting pieces instead of one.

9/22/15: The P4 project finally started progressing more in it's drawing stages. This is just a basic outline up to this point. Reference sheets on the right gave some insight into the details of knot on a noose and ideas of where a lighting source in the drawing would be.

9/23/15: The basic construction of Desolation is complete. As with some of the other projects I was working on around this time, simplicity was the focus here.

9/23/15: This project would eventually be called Disconnect even though at first everything seemed very connected.Following The Vessel and Desolation, Disconnect would have an additional piece attached to it. The only thing I never liked about this piece was the surface. With The Vessel and Desolation, they had bowl-like surfaces which with connecting pieces very well. With this, I decided not to do that and I think it ended looking too much like a flat piece by itself and not very well intergrated with the other pieces that are connected to it.

9/30/15: The construction on Disconnect is complete. My favorit part about this piece is the connecting piece to the far right. It isn't facing the other pieces. It's as if the two other pieces are seeing the same thing or are agreeing on something while the third piece disagrees or sees something different. This little last minute change is why the piece became known as Disconnect.

9/30/15: This project would eventually become Sybiotic Struggle. This title wouldn't be chosen until it's near-completion. This piece altohugh small and simple, has some major significance. It would become my first sagger firing. I was given simple instructions. Make something smooth, small, and simple. The clay that I used was not the usual hand building clay. Instead, I used clay that you'd use on a throwing wheel. It was tough to get used to. It was very slipery and took forever to dry.

9/30/15: Some more outline work was done on P4 as well as some practice work with the charcoal and pastels. I call it practice work because I figured if I screwed up on the bottom part of the drawing, it was be the easiest part to cover up as the P4 project progressed.