PeterK Posted May 3, 2012 Report Share Posted May 3, 2012 I'm a 17 year old highschool potter who has taken a very deep and passionate interest in ceramics over the past few months. I've been pushing myself farther and farther and farther every single day. The last thing i can somewhat step my foot in is into sectioned vases...So I made this section vase It's about 3 feet tall and 14 inches wide. I started with about 65 pounds of clay and cut it up into 3 sections. From there, i made each of the pieces separately and blah blah blah you know the rest. The bottom part has not been fully smoothed/trimmed and i'll be doing that tomorrow. This is my biggest piece i've ever made and my first sectioned piece ever. I ran into so much trouble and so much back pain. What do you guys think of it? Any advice on the form? It's still workable, and i can go work on it tomorrow provided you guys give me something good to work off of. Also, got any good glaze ideas? Firing to glaze fire cone 04. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.. thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pres Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 The form is reminiscent in the lower half of Toshiko Takaezu. She did multiple forms of this sort, but closed them very narrow or completely at the top. It is obvious where the joins are, so you will need to work on that. I would either balloon the form out for a rounder complete form, it will take it, large curved wooden rib inside. Other option is to keep the present lazy S curve, but make it a little, and I mean a little stronger. Then we get to the top. Personally I believe the top to be crushing the mid part of the form. Can you neck it, and continue out the S in an elongated bottle form, or at least minimize the size of the funnel to the lip? I am impressed with your effort, and it shows a good understanding of the multiple section process. did you bevel you joining areas or are they straight across? I usually beveled. It makes a stronger join. This form would be a little more efficient in two sections, as you could throw a 20lb 20 lb and get much the same form with less steps and joins. What is your max single weight? Keep on plugging away, you have a very early start on things. I was not throwing sectional until my late 20's, and then for pots that ranged from 3-8ft. I was in 2nd degree courses and had access to large gas kilns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark C. Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 I'm a 17 year old highschool potter who has taken a very deep and passionate interest in ceramics over the past few months. I've been pushing myself farther and farther and farther every single day. The last thing i can somewhat step my foot in is into sectioned vases...So I made this section vase It's about 3 feet tall and 14 inches wide. I started with about 65 pounds of clay and cut it up into 3 sections. From there, i made each of the pieces separately and blah blah blah you know the rest. The bottom part has not been fully smoothed/trimmed and i'll be doing that tomorrow. This is my biggest piece i've ever made and my first sectioned piece ever. I ran into so much trouble and so much back pain. What do you guys think of it? Any advice on the form? It's still workable, and i can go work on it tomorrow provided you guys give me something good to work off of. Also, got any good glaze ideas? Firing to glaze fire cone 04. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.. thanks. As you are asking for advice on form-my 2 cents is get a curve to the bottom 1/3 where it goes in then out-That is make the bottom 2/3 of the form a rounder form. The in then out about 1/3 up bothers me. It weakens the form. It will be easy to pull it out still. You may have wet it some more to do this. The top bowl form is fine. The only glaze advice is make sure the inside is glazes everywhere.-The outside is up to you. Mark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neilestrick Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 I don't mind the waist 1/3 up at all. I rather like the form. Try to get the joints to disappear, otherwise the illusion is ruined. Big pots can get away with imperfection much more than small pots (in person, anyway-photos are another story). Because your eye has to scan a large piece to see it all, you never really take in the whole thing all at once the way you do with small pots. Plus on small pots, small imperfections are big. Little things just don't show up as much on big pots. We had a saying in grad school: "If you can't make it good make it big. If you can't make it big paint it red." So while making bigger pots is definitely worth learning and is a wonderful skill to have, don't let size become the driver. Learn to make strong forms of all sizes.There is nothing more difficult than a 1 pound pot. Don't feel like you have to put glaze on this pot. Trying to brush on a low fire glaze could be a total mess. It will be really tough to get it applied evenly over that large a surface area. Spray the glaze if you can, or think about an iron oxide wash or something like that. Or maybe treat it like a canvas and paint on some imagery with underglazes. Lots of options. This is a good pot, and I wish I had your skill at that age. I didn't even discover the wheel until college. Keep it up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yedrow Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 I like the bottom two thirds. That being said, a pot is like a story, the hard part tends to be terminating it. The terminal parts generally require some drama and have to be in proportion to the story. It seems to me you may have struggled with that beginning with the neck. Poke around and look closely at how other potters end their pots. Look at the necks and the rims and how they are associated with the body of the work. A good termination causes the eye to want to return to the rest of the pot and to both see if it missed something and remind itself of the pleasure it found in viewing the object. I think you are doing great for your first few months of work. Also, a good thing to keep in mind is that the eye weighs a piece before it is touched. It is best to have the weight of the object be close to or less than what the eye thinks it should weigh. I hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Marcia Selsor Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 I agree that the bottom form is weak and not a flowing shape. But you did a nice job on the neck and upper form. Controlling forms and then integrating them is not easy. Good start for a 17 year old but "no cigar" yet! Marcia Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evelyne Schoenmann Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 First of all: congrats to your courage to do such a big pot and then ask other ceramists to "critique" your work. I would belly out the down part more evenly and make smaller the top part. And trimm it a bit more so as to erase the sections. As others already said: glaze it on the inside very well. Fill in lots of glaze and turn the pot horizontally a few times in your hands (maybe you need more than 2 hands...). On the outside I would paint big, fleshy plants with underglaze and a big brush. Then only transparent glaze on the painted areas. If it's a grogged clay, you can scratch away some of the areas with a metall halfmoon. But that's only an idea. Do you know Robin Hoppers book about "Making Marks"? Good source for the surface decoration!! So happy to see that young people like you are having joy in working with clay! Keep the pots coming!! Greetings from Switzerland Evelyne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Campbell Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 I agree that you should belly out the center more so it is graceful ... The top to me looks like you just put a bowl on top, it does not go with the rest of the form. I would cut it off, belly out the center and then step back and really look at it before you decide on how to finish it. The outside will be fun to decorate ... Carve it or make broad brush marks ... You have a great canvas to play with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GEP Posted May 4, 2012 Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 My first comment is logistical only ... does your high school have a kiln large enough to fire it? Most electric kilns have an interior height of 26 or 27 inches. As for critiquing the pot itself, I think it shows a great deal of natural ability for someone who has been throwing for less than a year. I agree with others that the overall form is a little weak, and that the top one-third and the bottom two-thirds seem like two unrelated shapes. If you need to make the pot shorter in order to fire it, I agree that removing the top bowl-shaped section would make the form better. Mea Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterK Posted May 4, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2012 My first comment is logistical only ... does your high school have a kiln large enough to fire it? Most electric kilns have an interior height of 26 or 27 inches. As for critiquing the pot itself, I think it shows a great deal of natural ability for someone who has been throwing for less than a year. I agree with others that the overall form is a little weak, and that the top one-third and the bottom two-thirds seem like two unrelated shapes. If you need to make the pot shorter in order to fire it, I agree that removing the top bowl-shaped section would make the form better. Mea No, we have a 8'x6'x6' gas kiln outdoors that we are firing this and about 300 other pieces that me and a few friends made in. Today, i trimmed the bottom third to where it is more of a bottle shape and it flows much better, according to my instructor and a few of my fellow classmates. It was supposed to be a 4 piece but the piece that was supposed to go under the bowl shape unfortunately broke and i did not have enough time to make another due to me graduating in 10 days. The neck was going to be bottled in then out then in then the top piece would've been added. I really wish i had the time, then I would've been able to make it a lot better. I am not good at painting, let alone painting with glaze, so that's why i wanted to do the colors dripping on white. Sort of a reflection on a dripping wax mural i did last year. And sadly, this piece is now leather hard because someone unwrapped my piece and didn't wrap it back up. It sat for 12 hours while a 1900 degree kiln was firing 15 feet from it. So now I am limited to trimming. :\ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pres Posted May 5, 2012 Report Share Posted May 5, 2012 My first comment is logistical only ... does your high school have a kiln large enough to fire it? Most electric kilns have an interior height of 26 or 27 inches. As for critiquing the pot itself, I think it shows a great deal of natural ability for someone who has been throwing for less than a year. I agree with others that the overall form is a little weak, and that the top one-third and the bottom two-thirds seem like two unrelated shapes. If you need to make the pot shorter in order to fire it, I agree that removing the top bowl-shaped section would make the form better. Mea No, we have a 8'x6'x6' gas kiln outdoors that we are firing this and about 300 other pieces that me and a few friends made in. Today, i trimmed the bottom third to where it is more of a bottle shape and it flows much better, according to my instructor and a few of my fellow classmates. It was supposed to be a 4 piece but the piece that was supposed to go under the bowl shape unfortunately broke and i did not have enough time to make another due to me graduating in 10 days. The neck was going to be bottled in then out then in then the top piece would've been added. I really wish i had the time, then I would've been able to make it a lot better. I am not good at painting, let alone painting with glaze, so that's why i wanted to do the colors dripping on white. Sort of a reflection on a dripping wax mural i did last year. And sadly, this piece is now leather hard because someone unwrapped my piece and didn't wrap it back up. It sat for 12 hours while a 1900 degree kiln was firing 15 feet from it. So now I am limited to trimming. :\ Remember what Forrest Gump said: . . . . It happens. At least you got the experience, and it was more of a success than a failure. At the same time it certainly displays your skills with the clay at this point. I'm sure we will see much more from you in the future. Happy graduation! Where to next year? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeterK Posted May 7, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 7, 2012 My first comment is logistical only ... does your high school have a kiln large enough to fire it? Most electric kilns have an interior height of 26 or 27 inches. As for critiquing the pot itself, I think it shows a great deal of natural ability for someone who has been throwing for less than a year. I agree with others that the overall form is a little weak, and that the top one-third and the bottom two-thirds seem like two unrelated shapes. If you need to make the pot shorter in order to fire it, I agree that removing the top bowl-shaped section would make the form better. Mea No, we have a 8'x6'x6' gas kiln outdoors that we are firing this and about 300 other pieces that me and a few friends made in. Today, i trimmed the bottom third to where it is more of a bottle shape and it flows much better, according to my instructor and a few of my fellow classmates. It was supposed to be a 4 piece but the piece that was supposed to go under the bowl shape unfortunately broke and i did not have enough time to make another due to me graduating in 10 days. The neck was going to be bottled in then out then in then the top piece would've been added. I really wish i had the time, then I would've been able to make it a lot better. I am not good at painting, let alone painting with glaze, so that's why i wanted to do the colors dripping on white. Sort of a reflection on a dripping wax mural i did last year. And sadly, this piece is now leather hard because someone unwrapped my piece and didn't wrap it back up. It sat for 12 hours while a 1900 degree kiln was firing 15 feet from it. So now I am limited to trimming. :\ Remember what Forrest Gump said: . . . . It happens. At least you got the experience, and it was more of a success than a failure. At the same time it certainly displays your skills with the clay at this point. I'm sure we will see much more from you in the future. Happy graduation! Where to next year? I am off to Wichita State University to study Fine Arts focusing on Ceramics. Nothing too special. And yeah, thank god I have the experience. I'm the only one who is really decent at throwing, even the only one who really throws, at my school. There are 5 people in my ceramics class and we have a lot of 1 on 1 time. But nearly everything I have done is self taught. I'll post a few more of my artworks after my final critique tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
claylady21 Posted May 7, 2012 Report Share Posted May 7, 2012 My first comment is logistical only ... does your high school have a kiln large enough to fire it? Most electric kilns have an interior height of 26 or 27 inches. As for critiquing the pot itself, I think it shows a great deal of natural ability for someone who has been throwing for less than a year. I agree with others that the overall form is a little weak, and that the top one-third and the bottom two-thirds seem like two unrelated shapes. If you need to make the pot shorter in order to fire it, I agree that removing the top bowl-shaped section would make the form better. Mea No, we have a 8'x6'x6' gas kiln outdoors that we are firing this and about 300 other pieces that me and a few friends made in. Today, i trimmed the bottom third to where it is more of a bottle shape and it flows much better, according to my instructor and a few of my fellow classmates. It was supposed to be a 4 piece but the piece that was supposed to go under the bowl shape unfortunately broke and i did not have enough time to make another due to me graduating in 10 days. The neck was going to be bottled in then out then in then the top piece would've been added. I really wish i had the time, then I would've been able to make it a lot better. I am not good at painting, let alone painting with glaze, so that's why i wanted to do the colors dripping on white. Sort of a reflection on a dripping wax mural i did last year. And sadly, this piece is now leather hard because someone unwrapped my piece and didn't wrap it back up. It sat for 12 hours while a 1900 degree kiln was firing 15 feet from it. So now I am limited to trimming. :\ Remember what Forrest Gump said: . . . . It happens. At least you got the experience, and it was more of a success than a failure. At the same time it certainly displays your skills with the clay at this point. I'm sure we will see much more from you in the future. Happy graduation! Where to next year? I am off to Wichita State University to study Fine Arts focusing on Ceramics. Nothing too special. And yeah, thank god I have the experience. I'm the only one who is really decent at throwing, even the only one who really throws, at my school. There are 5 people in my ceramics class and we have a lot of 1 on 1 time. But nearly everything I have done is self taught. I'll post a few more of my artworks after my final critique tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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