A brief overview...

...of an overdue update:
Art happened.
It was critiqued, and found variously good, bad, and improving.
The artist FINALLY understood some things that everyone had been trying to tell her. Only took three months.
*sigh*

Well, in response to most of the feedback I've been getting for my recent body of work, I have moved (kicking and screaming) into low-fire glazes and clays, though I'm still producing a little high-fire functional work on the side and using the occasional bit of cone 10 clay.
I take forever to convince, but I will readily admit that low-fire is so. much. better. for what I'm doing now that I've tried it.  No pics of completed cone 06-02 work yet, but here is a pretty of the mushroom I posted weeks ago. It is fired and finished and I love it (mostly).

 The responses I get on the finish intrigue me. 1/2 the people love it, the other half hate it. I both. The stem is a rutile variation of Bauer Clear, and it brings out the texture well, *I* think. Not crazy about the color, but it works. I don't have a good shot of the cap yet, but that worked out quite nicely - a gradation from yellow-brown to green, with deep highlights in the cracks.

And here is a bone dry critter of beastliness.  I'm doing more texture now that I've worked out a) what teachers/classmates meant in their critiques and b) how to achieve the desired results without wanting to stab the thing to frustrated death half way through.

Tomorrow, if the kiln behaves, I will have the first FULL crop of low-fire beasties and environments.  And then next Wednesday is my 1st year review. Lord willing, there will be 2 more kiln firings between now and then.

~Lucy

Sources

Here are some of the sources/citations I used in the summary/response paper to Sturken and Cartwright Ch. 9.

• On use of technology in Egyptian uprising: http://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/networking-rebellion-digital-policing-and-revolt-in-the-arab-uprisings/
• Vlogbrothers (initially known as Brotherhood 2.0): http://www.youtube.com/user/vlogbrothers?feature=watch

Hey, look, tangents!

Bullet points on Chapters 7 & 8, because I like bullet points and scattered thoughts.

• Postmodernist example: The entire genre of filk/parody music (Leslie Fish, Al Yankovic, etc.) is a postmodernist construction. Its entire existence is devoted almost entirely to allusions and parodies of a) other songs, b) other parodies of other songs, or c) popular culture topics (the internet, lolcats, the vagaries of Facebook, and much, much more!)
• The total worldwide subcultures propagated and supported by technological advances bring to mind a more tangible view (right word? I am not sure) of the Jungian theories of the collective unconscious.

There were more thoughts, but they will have to wait for later, since I want to get home before Sandy makes the roads impassable. 

~Lucy

I've got another still larger Beastie in sections on my work table and the shroom from last week's picture about ready to go in the bisque kiln (slated for Tu-Th). I have finally started to break past the size limit to which I've confined my handbuilt Beasties thus far. However, I run in to a problem with the more expansive, expressive critters - they are too horizontal/heavy to join without breaking when they are at the proper moisture level to be joined. I deal with that issue in current piece by just building the cap and stalk separately and not joining them; I plan to glaze them together, if I join them physically at all. This works to a degree, but now I have to make sure the pieces will a) fit together when dry, b) fit together without overstressing the inside of the cap, c) not fit too loosely that they will break on each other or look loose.

Some plans to help with making successful larger forms:

---buttressing the interstitial space in the double-walled caps

--- a more exaggerated double wall on the caps, but one that swoops from the outer edge down and then up into the cap to give a visual fullness AND make a slot for the stalk to fit into.

For the stalk, I am currently taking super-thin slabs and folding them into/onto/over themselves and each other, so that they form deep ridges and bumps.  I'm fond of the way this works on the stalk tops (stems) but it's not translating well where it spreads out at the bottom, so I'm thinking that another approach might involve a separately built center stalk section and then threading/layering coils off of it.

On another note, I love the Loafer's Glory clay body.

No pictures this week.

~Lucy

Shrooms.

Larger and larger still. This one is about 6 inches high, unless the roots splay out more.  I'm working out the construction challenges in the root systems. This one has 3 sections of clay that I pounded out about 1/8" thick, saturated, then folded up on themselves and joined to others until something vaguely stalk-like emerged. I think I'll try 2 different systems on the next 2: this approach again, except formed *around* a central tall stalk for structural support; and a very thick base -nearly solid - that I'll carve in to.

New work in progress

Got a bisque kiln unloaded today, and am now able to photograph them without worrying about breakage (as much).
Here're some mushroom creatures, first generation. More recent ones have more texture all over, and double walled bottoms (pics to come). Name: Walking Fungi, or Migrating Mushrooms; something like that.
These are very flared pinch pots, and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do the stems.  They have roots now, and those will get bigger.

I'm still stuck using the crapcam on my phone until I find my transfer cable, so the resolution sucks, but I think it will work for now.

These are some Capacious Ovovores form the desert region, and their prey, the Sedimentovoid Pseudopods. Right now I am just getting the basics of how to construct them so that they will freaking STAY. TOGETHER. DARNIT!  Having multiple piece-construction is not new to me, but until recently I was working in vessel forms and always had a central stable base to come back to, structurally.  These more active forms are fun and challenging.  As I get the basic technical aspects down they will develop more texture and a larger scale.

That's all for now, more later.

~Lucy

Hey, look, link!

ADD and television viewing in children:
http://www.whitedot.org/issue/iss_story.asp?slug=ADHD%20Toddlers

A glorious Steampunk comic (an alternate approach to technology and society in history, as portrayed by art!):
http://girlgeniusonline.com/