Porcelain Cups

Over the weekend I had had 3 kilns with various things on the go. One was my own with all of my cups in, one was Keith's with some glaze tests in and one way Jo's with some bisque earthenware in. Out of the glaze test one of Keith's, I got these results, of which I'm really rather happy...

The purple/red colour is a little more raspberry than in the above photo. These should fit into my exhibition well, cobining the fragility of the fine porcelain with this idea of a sea of tranquil turquoise cups being quite harshly interjected with a rich red/purple colour.

I spent until about 10pm tonight glazing all 102 cups I have made so it was one job out of the way. Tomorrow I will mix more glazes and set to work glazing the gun-metal grey pots. As for now its high time I slept!

SO MANY CUPS!

So after this weeks ceramics tutorial my tutor thinks I'm going slightly mad. The reason? because I've now made over 100 cups. I'm pretty damn pleased with how they look on mass. Here's some pictures...

Most of these aren't fired yet but the few at the back are. However before leaving I put them all in the kiln.

So when I've glazed all of these (hopefully in the same turquoise as my little thrown ones) I plan on arranging them in our exhibition in a rather mismatched way, going from the floor onto a plinth. This would require them sticking to the side of the plinth. To do this I'm doing a test over the weekend with some sticky fixer tape. 

They seem to have stuck so far, however I've left them with a foam pad under over the weekend, just in case they decide to fall off!


Can't wait for the exhibition now, feel like after this very stressful and exhausting week I'm going to finally have it sorted. 


Be sure to come and see the exhibition... http://166bpm.blogspot.com

More and More Porcelain Cups

Just a quick one to update you on my progress. I was in uni until quarter to 10 tonight, would be tomorrow too but I've got work. However now I'm on about 57 of the little beauties.

Also we got our exhibition posters and invites today, its all starting to feel a LOT more real now and so close! I hope I can get everything done in time, I have big plans and little time. STRESS!

Mould and Porcelain Casting Slip Making

This week just gone has been one of the busiest ever! I've been in print, sculpture and ceramics practically all week, that plus having work most nights too meant that this weekend has been a nice break.

Anyway, in the ceramics department I have made 6 moulds, 3 tubs of porcelain casting slip and about 30 beaker forms from them. To make these moulds I started with a few of my thrown beaker forms from the throwing workshop a couple of weeks earlier. From these I cast moulds out of plaster, soft soaped up the moulds and cast models from these. This was basically so that I had an easy way to make multiple moulds.

I then separated them and made multiple moulds from each model, allowing me to cast more at once as I am after a sheer number of similar forms.



This is me foolishly using tims scraper to hammer my model and mould apart... it didn't go down too well!

However this meant I'd made 6 moulds.

Next was to make a load of porcelain casting slip. This was so I could get the extremely fine thin porcelain beakers I want.

So I bought 2 bags of prcelain clay and set to work following the recipe.

-25kg Audrey Blackman Porcelain

-50g Sodium Silicate (140° TW)

-50cc Sodium Dispex

-3 litres water

After lots of chopping up clay and mixing ingredients together with a giant hand blender (which I found rather novel) I had to weigh up 3 pints to get the water content. After a little bit of chopping and changing I managed to get it within the limits. Next I added more diluted sodium dispex to the mixture (this is the defloculant - the ingredient which keeps everything suspended) to get the right viscosity. Who knew an art subject could get so technical?

So after all that I've now got myself these 3 buckets full of the creamiest white porcelain slip. It looks so much like melted white chocolate its untrue, but I'm sure it wouldn't taste too good. Now I'm in the process of mass casting and am doing OK so far. However I still need to make another model and another few moulds as there's a bit of a size gap between my beaker forms. More to come soon when I have my first lot out of the kiln, bring on tomorrow!

Berlin

I've been back from Berlin for a week now, how depressing. I loved it SO much over there, had an amazing time. I visited tonnes of galleries, saw some sights and generally had an awesome time with some pretty awesome people... we even managed to fit some cheese jokes in too. 


Here's some pictures (just a few mind) from the holiday...

View out of airplane when on our way

Alexanderplatz

Bit of Andy Warhol

Can't remember the artist but I loved this, it was like catching sound in art, which is what I am interested in.

Loved this photo, its Kate at the other end of a square metal tube, looks like a kaleidescope. 

Alexanderplatz S-Bahn on our way to Charlottenburg, quite a nice group photo methinks.

Accordion man... he made my day, everything he played sounded like it was the soundtrack to our train journey. 

Kate pushing two buildings apart in Potsdamerplatz - there were quite a few perspective photos taken that week.

Ella on Freidrichstrausse with her bear gloves :)

Some graffiti near Tacheles 

Tacheles - the whole place was coated in graffiti like this.

The Berlin Wall

Little Jewish Rubber Ducks at the Jewish Museum gift shop, I thought they were quite funny.

Flo, Hannah, Ella and Lucy on the big letterboard/crossword outside the Nan Gollen museum.

Me with a foot either side of where the Berlin Wall used to be.

I had such a fantastic time and none of us wanted to leave. I will definitely be going back there as soon as I can, great place!

Ceramic Art London 2011

The Friday before I went to Berlin, I went with uni to see Ceramic Art London. I had such an inspiring time and was in awe of some of the work there. I came back wanting to just go into the studio and try out various things.
Here's a few pictures...

Sasha Wardell - Slip cast fine bone china (she taught us slip casting, was really nice to see her there!)

Valéria Nascimento - porcelain forms inpired by the natural world.

Nuala O'Donovan - sculptural ceramics that combines regular patter with characteristics found in nature. I loved this work and it looks even more stunning in the flesh.

Lesley Risby - her work examines the essence of fragility and vulnerability using stained porcelain and nichrome wire. I loved the fineness of the porcelain and how fragile it seemed, a quality I want to pursue.

Lara Scobie - her work is based on the relationship between form and pattern. I love the material she has cast these items from, its called Parian. I had a nice chat to her about it. Its a self-glazing casting slip that gives a lovely fine and slightly textured surface. I want to look into making some Parian to try some casts from as they has such a beautiful quality about them.

Fenella Elms - this persons work was more than amazing. She makes each little piece and fits them together into these seas of small fragments. Apprently, when talking to her, she said that she never plans what it will look like and just lets the pieces determine the overall. You have to see one in the flesh to see really how beautiful they are.

Claire Loder - these quirky heads are the work of my tutor Claire. The more I look at them the more I like them, they have so much character. Was really good to see her there too!

I'm not quite sure who these were by, they were in the student exhibition space downstairs, however I loved them. Little cast cupcake wrappers.

As you can see there was so much stunning work there and these pictures are but a fragment of it all. I think my new aim is to be in CAL in the future... best get working really hadn't I!

Artist Statement

I work in ceramics using both slip casting and throwing techniques. Working with white clays, primarily porcelain, I am interested in the fragile qualities that can be achieved from these clay bodies. I find the fine characteristics of these materials, especially porcelain with its almost translucent nature when fired, very alluring and like to draw on this delicate quality in my practice. 

I focus on the contrast between the uniqueness found in nature against reproduced more industrial forms, and I try to incorporate this into my work by abstracting nature and creating collections of similar ceramic objects.

Throwing Course

About a week before my assessment (mid February-ish), I took part in a two day throwing course at university. Having thrown mainly last year I was familiar with the basic principles, however had got a little rusty over the summer. This was quite a nice break from all the slip casting I had been doing and I learnt some nice techniques. I happily got back into the swing of it all and focused on throwing quite straight-sided cup/beaker forms.

In day two of the workshop I ventured into the unknown and tried throwing with porcelain. Its harder to throw with because its so plastic that it just slips around in your hands. However after many failed attempts and a few stress relieving cigarettes I started to get the hang of it and realised how nice it is to throw with. You can make the walls of the vessel you're making so much thinner than regular stoneware and because its so fine you can be left with a really nice surface quality. I again focused on making these beaker forms and before my assessment I found a soft satin turquoise glaze and glazed them, this is what I ended up with...

Beautiful, no? I got them out of the kiln and loved them, they made my day! My next intentions are to cast from these and my other thrown beaker forms. I want to create hundreds of the same, playing with this idea of the hand-thrown against the identical slip-cast. And yes... I fully intend to cast them as finely as physically possible in porcelain casting slip, giving them an almost 'throw-away' quality. I think these will be my main work in our exhibition.



Massive Update - Slip Casting Project

Has now been over a month since I last blogged, having been busy with assessments and Berlin I've totally forgotten to, so heres what you've missed, staring way back at the beginning of February sometime... oh dear!
So this was back in February, I had had a very productive week in ceramics and managed to churn out lots of test tiles for glazes and even more of my slip casts. 

I then had lots of fired (yet still unglazed) pots out of my first mould. I decided (after a little chat with Claire) that I should clean off my shelf and have a little play with arranging them and taking some photos... the above is what I did. I think I really like this idea or repetition, creating something out of lots of the same part. 

This is four of the interlocking piece idea. Again I like this idea of creating something, even a pattern from the use of repeated forms. I love the way the curves and cut off work when arranged like this, I also love the way the curved form works against the cut angular tops of the vessel forms.

So after all of this I had a play around with how I wanted to glaze these forms.  I decided that I wanted this repetition idea to be central to how I wanted them glazed, and so I went with the idea of a gradient. To do this I decided to glaze each pot a slightly different shade of grey, going from white at one end to black at the other. This would accentuate the idea of repetition and let the viewer focus on the form of the object.

My next step was to do some glaze testing, I wanted a nice smooth gradient and so I tried two different white glazes, and added tiny amounts of black glaze stain into them. The top set was a barium matt glaze. I loved the matt quality of the tests, however I hated the fact that in very low quantities the black glaze stain reacted with something in the barium glaze to give a beige like colour and not a pale grey. So I then tried it with a shiny white glaze, which turned out amazingly.

I was adding 0.25g of black glaze stain for each test. From these I figured out that the colour difference was greater in the lower quantities than in the higher quantities. From this I realised that to get an even gradient I would need to draw up a graph to show the relation between how dark they were and how much glaze stain I had added. 

...and from these I made up a big batch of glaze and glazed my pots (13 inners and 7 outers) in the gradient...

...and these are the finished articles...