SPIRAL CYLINDERS FINISHED!!
So here it is, the last piece of the spiral-step series. I made 5 pieces in this series and it took like a year. Like literally a year. I made other pieces in between, but really these pieces were the only "works of art" I produced during this time. And they're so consistent! Each one has a pretty glaring flaw, except maybe the pointed oval one. This one, the cylinder, is flawed mostly because someone who works at Greenwich House Pottery accidentally put it into the high-fire kiln, instead of the low-fire. As a result, it came out mottled and gray and warped considerably more than it would have in low-fire. I glazed it in Majollica, so it should have come out a beautiful, smooth, bright, shiny white. Still, I basically feel fortunate that it survived at all - putting a low-fire glaze into high fire can result in a piece being completely destroyed. If it weren't for the drab-looking finish, this piece would be pretty darn fine. Here's a few more pix, followed by the stuff I wrote while I was building this piece:
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Having survived bisquing, this piece is one I'm really keeping my fingers crossed for. Everyone at the studio says it reminds them of the Guggenheim Museum, which I guess is obvious, except that its basic form is fundamentally different: the Guggenheim is a spiral with the expanding arc rotating around a single axis; this piece is a spiral of separate circles, each on its own layer and each with a different axis/center-point, although the spiral form itself (which is not physically there) of course has its own, single center point. The pieces of this series are all obviously architecturally inspired, but their geometries go pretty far beyond any building that has actually been constructed or designed (that I know of). It would be "nice" if any one of them ever inspired an actual building to be made. Hint, hint to all you architects out there. ;-)
It has a couple cracks in a couple spots that my instructor, Nick Schneider and the studio manager, Albert Pfarr (both incredible artists) advised me that it might be better to low-fire glaze the piece to minimize the danger of these cracks widening. And I got some advice that using Majollica glaze would be the best option in order to hide the cracks most effectively. Coincidentally I decided the piece would look best in white, so Majollica made the most sense. I'm not thrilled about low-firing it because I can just picture the piece falling over at some point and shattering, whereas if I high-fired it, it might survive such a tumble intact. Anyway, here are a few more photos of the piece just before low-firing it. The piece next to it on the shelf is a sculpture by Albert Pfarr (incredible, right?).
