QotW: How has your work progressed in terms of variety of form??

[Pres]

Hi folks, once again there appears to be nothing in the Pool the is new, so I will ask a follow up on Hulk's question of the last week or so, QotW: How has your  work progressed in terms of variety of form?

This is relevant, because I have seen a lot of throwers over the years and found that some would throw almost any form, and some would always throw just a few forms. As we all know, there are 3 major forms, the cylinder, bowl, and plate. However, within each of these there is a wonderful range of variation. I have been a teacher in the past, and found that students would want to know something that may be obscure, How to throw something that you had not idea how to begin. It may have been a chip and salsa dish, or a tulipiere, or a wheel thrown butter dish for stick butter. All too often I would fall back on the 3 forms and navigate a course of throwing and construction. Finishing these projects would show the students that there was a need for creative thinking within the seemingly tight context of throwing. Ever have a failure, certainly, I still have not been able to throw a sphere! Just don't seem to leave enough clay in the base to support the form, or can't get the form to go beyond a narrow base to a shoulder 2/3 of the way up going to a neck. Maybe one day!

QotW: How has your  work progressed in terms of variety of form?

best,

Pres

[Magnolia Mud Research]

2 hours ago, Pres said:

QotW: How has your  work progressed in terms of variety of form?

 

2 hours ago, Pres said:

     ...  I still have not been able to throw a sphere! Just don't seem to leave enough clay in the base to support the form, or can't get the form to go beyond a narrow base to a shoulder 2/3 of the way up going to a neck.

One answer to the "Thrown Sphere" problem is to first know how much clay is needed to make "the sphere", or to know how big will be "the sphere" for the known amount of clay being used.  (gotta do some math here: get the volume of the sphere outside diameter and subtract the diameter of the inside sphere of air to find the minimum amount of clay needed. add about 1/3 more for trimming, etc). make a thick wall cylinder and expand the in the middle. rib the bottom of the cylinder to the shape of the inside.  

The top 3/4-th of the sphere is thrown directly from a cylinder using the skills of throwing the shoulder and spout of a bottle; close the bottle into a sphere; you now have a closed form of the top 3/4-th done.  Let the form stiffen for a while; then trim the bottom 1/4-th to complete the sphere. [Practice by making hollow thrown doughnuts.]  

Or take the approach I did in a class assignment for making a "thrown sphere":  Take a 4x4x4 inch cube of wet clay; shape the cube into a smooth sphere; throw the sphere up in the air and let it fall onto a sheet of paper the floor (or on to your work table if you don't like to bend over); carefully lift the piece from the floor (table) add some decorative slip, dry, remove the paper, fire, and present on a pedestal with the title "Thrown Sphere".   Others in the class made two half sphere bowls that were joined one over the other.  

Seriously (and more on-topic) one must recognize that most thrown forms are monotonous unless we deliberately switch from being a throwing machine and use our artistic skills to produce something interesting.  I have colleagues that uses simple plain thrown bottles and bowls as canvases for painting with slips and glazes.  I use simple thrown forms with applied "dry slips" to produce random tactility textured canvases for a ground for "painting" with a glaze.  The thrown form becomes an three dimensional canvas for making interesting marks.  Look at the work by Tony Clennell ( http://smokieclennell.blogspot.com/ )  over the last five years.  His forms are simple bowls, cylinders, platters, etc.  are canvases to be used to apply handles, feet, and glaze.  Or the work by Antonette Badenhorst:   https://www.porcelainbyantoinette.com/  or https://www.aic-iac.org/en/member/antoinette-badenhorst/  the forms are simple bowls and cylinders.  Look at the work of Voulkous, Paul Soldner, Marcia Selsor, etc. --  the thrown forms are just their starting point.  But they were/are past the making bowls for food service; they were/are making art objects not bowls.   

.  i quit making "bowls" when the family said we've got enough "bowls"!!!!;    switched to making "interesting 3-d stuff" out of clay -- some of which can be used as a food container (or napkin compressor,  or sling-shot target, or ...); the owner chooses how to use it.    

try making square bird-houses with slanted roofs using thrown lidded cylinders.  

LT

[LeeU]

My forms have not so much "progressed" as they have just kind of wandered off sideways, over the years.  I look back and see less variety currently, in the sense that I no longer make a boatload of things such as large bird baths or sculpted figures or different types of bowls, lids, mugs etc.    Simplifying and  getting more primal is a metaphoric progress for me, in that it seems to seriously benefit my head. I am less interested in developing  a broader range than I am in fine-tuning the limited array  of forms that are emerging now.   I don't throw much and my slab/hand built forms  stay pretty low to the ground these days. Some of that is logistics & comfort:  space considerations, money, arthritis/back and such, but mostly I am intrigued with a kind of stream of consciousness process that I am allowing to take over when I put my hands on the clay...more free-form than planned form.  My challenge is to improve, improve, refine, refine, and see what the public will go for...that's my task, assuming I am accepted into this artisans shop in June.