Goodbye Amy, Hello Whitney



Today was Amy's last day at school. I know she decided she wasn't going to cry, but by the end of class I could tell that it was really hard for a lot of us to keep back the tears. Although I am REALLY sad that she is leaving, I am happy for her, her family, and her soon-to-be addition to the family, Blake!!!!! I wish her well and hope that she comes to visit us!!

Whitney, our new teacher, seems SUPER nice. I can't wait to get to know her better. I hope she will learn to love our class for all of our odd quirks.... I think she will. Lexie and I decided that we would make a pact with the other AP3D kids to stand up against the evils of the art teacher in the class next to us who will remain unnamed...............

ANYWAYS I am really looking forward to next semester and can't wait to see what..... interesting things I will decide to make. Heres one of the projects that I have been working on this week:

It's another basket made out of clay slurry. This one is the biggest one that I have made so far. I'm just crossing my fingers that it won't break!! I'm just waiting for it to dry so I can bisque fire it. If it makes it through bisque fire then I should be safe.... knock on wood.

So..... that's all for now.

BYE AMY!!!! YOU'RE THE GREATEST <3

Busy as a Bee

Well, winter break is over. Time to head back to school.... and start counting down the days until spring break!!! Today I was cleaning out my cabinet and was surprised to find a concentration project that I had completely forgotten about. WHAT A LOVELY SURPRISE. I was going to photograph it and put it up with this blog but unforntunately it had to go straight into the kiln.... So I will upload a picture of it later. Today I succeeded in making a basket using a plaster mold and the handheld extruder. It turned out pretty well and it looks a little more basket-y than some of the other stuff I've been doing.

Today I also loaded two of my glazed baskets into the kiln. These were the really fragile ones and I'm just crossing my fingers that they survive in the kiln....

So now for the million-dollar question....... WHAT'S NEXT?!
Well just today I sent an email to Marion Pollmann (see 2 blogs down) asking her about some of her techniques. Hopefully she will get back to me by next class because I would love to start trying to create a piece similar to her work. Something like this:

That's all for now. Bye.

daaayyyyuuuummm.....

I'm practicing humiliation by putting this photo up for the world wide web to see.

I know... scary. I don't care. Oh and p.s. this is at the Lake Oswego Deno's Pizza

Marion Pollmann

I was going to post a blog about what I've been working on lately but I'm going to wait until I can get pictures of my stuff. So, for now, I wanted to tell everyone about a new artisit that has inspired me and given me new ideas for my concentration pieces.....

Her name is Marion Pollmann. She was born in Austria but moved to America in 1994. She now lives in Olympia, Washington.

     

She makes a lot of basket forms that I really like. I cant really figure out how she makes some of her pieces (if she extrudes thin coils of clay, rolls the coils, or uses a clay slurry) so I'm planning on contacting her to see what her technique is....

She spends time traveling throughout Europe and in the South Pacific. Her travels influence her work in interesting ways. Her vases are inspired by her earlier life in Europe where, she says, people give much more importance to flowers and vases in their homes. Time in Tahiti brought forth her ceramic baskets and two lines of dishes. I find it inspiring that she travels around the world to get inspiration for her pieces.

This is one of my favorite pieces by her... I really want to figure out how she makes it!!!

Artist Watch: Lanzarin Antonio

Hey bloggers.....
So when I was trying to find artists that did work similar to what I want my concentration to be, I came across a couple of artists that made basket forms. One artist in particular was this guy named Lanzarin Antonio. He makes ceramic baskets, but not in the way I had originally planned on making mine.

He makes his out of coils and strips of slab clay. Looking at his work made me reconsider what I wanted my perameters to be for my concentration. Originally, I was planning on making the baskets strictly out of clay slurry. But now that I'm thinking about what I want to do more, I'm kind of considering making my concentration a more borad genre of "baskets". Let me know what you think!

I Think My Concentration Will Be.........

BASKETS!!!! Baskets made of clay. I started doing these towards the end of last year. They're really fun to make but the problem is that they are SO DELICATE. last year only like 50% of the ones I made actually survived through glazeware. So I would probably have to make a lot of them since half of them will break. I want to experiment more with shape and pattern of the lines and also the shape of the basket itself. I also want to try different clays/glazes (raku?!?). This is going to be very interesting....

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!!

Concentrating......

So over the past week we've had to come up with 25 concentration ideas. The we had to narrow it down to 5 ideas. And then we had to pick 2... all in just a week. In my PERSONAL opinion, I don't think concentrations are a good idea and I really don't like the concept of it. I get that the college board wants to see that we are able to focus on just one theme and create art pieces based on that theme. But, as an artist, I feel like we shouldnt be so limited. Concentrations just stress me out. I like being able to do what I feel like doing. If I were rebellious enough I probably just wouldn't do a concentration. But I'm not a rebel. And I want to submit a portfolio. And get a good score on that portfolio. So I guess I'm going to do a concentration.....