(*** note: see "UPDATE" at end of this post...)  On the heels of the "Gris" piece I just finished, I was going to make a lamp.  I got a little carried away with the form, and it kept toppling over.  Then I started building it on its side.  Then I thought, jeesh, just leave that form on its side and make a horizontal piece, and the lamp be damned.  The form is the bottom-most piece - a sort of figure-8 lying on its side, with an extra loop.

Here's the result, just before bisquing (it's about 30" tall, per usual):

It's a little "busy", I know.  Maybe I didn't know where to stop.  As with the "Gris" piece, I didn't have a plan for what it would look like before I began, or anywhere along the way.  I finished a section, then just imagined the next section and possibly the one after and built it.  Then there had to be a sort of "flourish" at the end - a gesture that makes the entire piece come to its service.  That's how I think of the ribbon-like top piece, which flows down to the base in a graceful, if tortured, way.  At the top, from certain angles, it looks more like a dragon's head than a ribbon (although maybe that's just because I watched "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King" again last night) and if you go with the dragon idea, it might look like the dragon is emerging from a chaotic cloud of, well, ashes, and voila, you've got your basic phoenix sculpture.  I suppose every artist at some point channels a phoenix, dontcha think?

UPDATE:

(March 6, 2011)    A funny thing happened as I was on the verge of taking the piece to be bisqued... karma from just a smidge too much hubris?   And I had though hubris was just part of the "making art" deal.

 I keep thinking about this one Roz Chast cartoon where the character had purchased a lovely ceramic vase and on the way home the bag "just tapped" against something and when she got home discovered it had shattered into 1 million pieces.  I "just tapped" the work-table with my knee, and, ka-boom, it was all over in a split second.  

I have to say, I'm deeply appreciative of the words of encouragement, post-disaster, I've gotten from like a dozen of my compatriots at the ceramics studio - urging me to continue working in this vein, despite the, um, "structural failure" of this piece.   Thanks to all for boosting my morale!

 

Second spontaneous bioform sculpture - in progress...

*****

Enough with the old series, onward spontaneously! GRIS sculpture finished!

I've named this piece "Gris" because of its color and because another artist in the studio said it reminded her of Juan Gris' work.  He happens to be my favorite Cubist painter.

After glazing: a very pale lavender-blue (china white over "don reitz green" glazes; high fire; "T1" sculpture clay)

 detail shots:

This is my first sculpture not in the "step-spiral" series, since I started that one (which I think is now finished...).  It's going so much faster because it's just attaching slabs together, whereas each layer of the spiral steps was like its own sculpture, which although they were simple, they had to be sorta perfect, and then I had to assemble all of those together, again with the idea of achieving a form as close to the perfect geometric form in my head.   This new one I had only a really vague notion of what it would look like finished, even after I had done the base.  Just sort of letting each step dictate itself as I work my way up.  I'm having more fun with it because it is more spontaneous and I can incorporate what might be mistakes and make them "happy accidents" - one of my favorite things about making art: you can transform accidents into assets in about two seconds.  

Before high-firing (after glazing: china white over "don reitz green")

Before bisquing:

JUST BEFORE BISQUING!

Spiral cylinder vessel finished.

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:

 * * * * *

 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?).

  

Work in Progress!

Ostensibly, this is the latest and final addition to my geometric-spiral-shapes vessels series.  I like this guy the best, but I felt that way about all of them at this stage - just before bisque-ing.

 

Saggar "unveiled"!!

When last we visited, I was preparing a saggar container for a new piece to be fired therein. (see prior entry)

Well, here's the follow-up, post-firing (cone 2)

Container looks like a kind of sad, steroided roasted pork, upon emerging from the kiln:

Next, break on through the shell - feels like a dinosaur egg:

And the piece is revealed.  I didn't know what to expect, but let's just say I was underwhelmed:

Can you tell which is the saggar tray debris and which is my newest ceramic work of "art"?

Thus endeth my foray into Saggartown.

Saggar !

-
In this week's class at Greenwich House Pottery, most of us were led by our incredible instructor, Lisa Chicoyne, in making saggar containers.  For the uninitiated, saggar is when you wrap a piece in a container in order to surround it with what you could call exotic firing elements during its sunbathing expedition to the kiln. These elements are anything that introduces carbon and other base chemicals into the atmosphere within the container during firing, which then color the surfaces in a completely unique, and apparently somewhat unpredictable way.   Here are several shots of the piece to be saggared being bound by copper strips, then surrounded by wood chips, mulched paper, dried grass, dog food (for real!), rock salt and carbon sulfate, aka "root kill", all in a paper bag, which is then wrapped in newspaper drenched in clay slip (liquid clay), papier-maché style.   And introducing my new firing tray in its debut performance, seen in the first couple shots, ready to live a selfless life in service to other, more glamorous, art objets.