Ceramics

Ceramics class is over and all of my pieces have been finished!  It feels great to have so many pieces come out the way I wanted them to.  Here is a short description of each piece, followed by a gallery containing the pieces in both finished and unfinished forms.

Final:  The title of this piece is Erosion.  I described the concept in a previous post:

http://brandonrubin.com/2009/03/25/ceramics-final-ideas/

The Tromp L’oeil:  This assignment is to copy any piece of clothing in clay and make it look as real as possible.

Slab Project:  Built from leather hard slabs of strong clay.  The project is to make an interior and I am basing it on my bedroom.

Mask:  This was the first piece we made in Ceramics.  It was made of a buttery white clay and the instructions were to make a smooth surface and keep the shapes somewhat simple.  This is because of the surface treatment.  It is coated with Terra Sigillata, an old Roman compound used to seal pottery for waterproofing.  We are using it because it makes a nice shiny surface that accepts the final treatment well.  After firing smoking newspaper was held up to the masks.  The surface absorbed the smoke and created a nice black and white coloring.

Puppet:  The glaze used on the puppet is called Raku.  This is a special glaze that is taken out of the kiln while still red hot and dumped in a tin of combustibles.  Whatever is in the tin will ignite and react with the glaze.  The surface formed is shiny and has an iridescent look.  It has similar qualities to a sheen of oil on water.  The underglazes show up underneath clear crackle raku, but most rakus are opaque glazes with their own color.

The Test Tile Army!!!

Here they come…