A Brief Ceramic Interlude: Fall 2019

This past semester I taught ceramics at Black Hawk College.  Here are a few of the things I worked on to kill time while I was firing the kilns.  A couple of them are actual in-class demonstration pieces.

A couple pinch, slab, and coil combo heads.

These are two sling mold demonstration vessels that I made using coils, slabs, and a scraper.

I dumped the waste bucket glaze into the inside for a tasteful 'alien xenomorph/bug splatter vibe'...

I threw in a Big Gulp cup to help provide a sense of scale for these two vessels.  The big one barely fit into the kiln and had to be lowered with canvas straps because there was not enough room for my hands to hold onto it.  There's a little peek at Kyklopes in the background...

A close up of the glaze job on the big one.

The small one up close.

Before I glazed the large vessel, I stained the cracks.  Here's what the (nearly) unglazed bottom looks like.  I may return to this look/feel for future endeavors...

I also made a little over 500 of these dudes.  They are the ultimate time killer when you are slowly raising the temperature in a kiln...

Anyway, my friend, colleague, (and boss!) Zaiga Thorson, suggested I have these dudes spilling out of one of my coil constructions...

So I jammed a couple hundred of them into the smaller vessel...

...and then set up my earlier quasi-parody of Vic Muñiz's version of 'The Death of Marat'.

These little exercises have triggered several ideas including an arena and a swimming pool.  I make no promises on the time frame for these ideas (and more!) to be made into reality.