Pottery
This quarter when I was working on my pottery I spent the first part of the quarter finished the comfort pieces, this took longer than usual due to technical difficulties with the kilns. There were a couple of weeks in between when I finished the comfort pieces and when I started making my new pieces where I did not make anything. I remember aspiring to make larger pieces and wanting to work with larger chunks of clay but I didn't know what the end products would be. I wanted to make a piece about death, how it is portrayed in this society and how in actuality it is something that happens naturally and it is a beautiful process. But, with my declining mental health this early on I knew that the acceptance death combined with the feeling that my own life did not having a purpose was not a good combination. Due to not knowing what I would make with larger amounts I decided to scale down my ideas and simplify them to… Teapots!
TeapotsTeapots were the larger part of my work this quarter. The teapots themselves are part of a set, two teapots, two cups, and one bowl all made of red clay with a blue indigo glaze only coating the inside and dripping down the sides of the vessels. The two cups and teapots have faces built onto them, the teapots have “tea” written on them and the cups do not have handles. I threw the cups and the bowl on the wheel and hand built the teapots by making a cylinder and bulging out the middle and tapering in the top.
Teapots are not complicated. The art that I have made in the past, with the exception of Bee, has been complicated. All of my past paintings have had complex ideas behind them, with teapots, cups, and general kitchenware the ideas are not as big. With my paintings the ideas behind them were; pride, how culture affects individuals, connection to the world around us, mother-daughter connection, maternal instinct, connection to self, hidden beauty, and remembering loved ones. With the pottery that I make, I enjoy the process of making. I make teapots because I enjoy it not because I want to communicate some large idea, the idea comes after and is inspired by the product. This quarter I also made a luminary and a jar. These pieces were my attempts at working with larger pieces of clay, the jar was thrown with 5 pounds of clay and the luminary was thrown with 8 pounds of clay. Each of these pieces connects me to the desert, the jar has a desert landscape on it painted with underglaze and a clear glaze on top of it. The luminary was originally supposed to have my Nana Gloria's face on it but I just decided to go with a generic face. There are wrinkles coming from the eyes and the spaces between the wrinkles are lifted and curled back to reveal the inside of the vessel. On the sides of the pieces I wrote “te quiero mucho” and names of family members that have had a significant effect on my life. I am going to change my learning plan goal for pottery to a stronger focus on kitchenware. |