what i made during my sixth ceramics class
welcome to the penultimate episode of this season of my 'what i made in my ceramics class' series. this would be my fourth wheel-throwing class, the third retake with this instructor/day/time. it was during this class that the studio experienced a kiln malfunction which impacted some of my work but i learned a lot from the experience.
anyway blah blah blah, check out what i made during my sixth ceramics class.
i made two wax melters, a closed vessel, a plate, and a cup. all were extremely experimental across trying different shapes, glazes, techniques and even seeing if i could salvage a piece that had cracked in bisque. rotating and opening them shows i basically used these as test tiles.
i played so fast and loose this class, i'm shocked i left it with so many functional items. i cracked the cup when it was bone dry from shoving my house-sized hand inside while trying to sponge blue underglaze. i was like, maybe it won't get worse and i can just fix it when glazing. the crack is very much there, but the glaze held it together. i really just should have tossed the cup in reclaim and not fired it, but i was so curious as to whether my gut feeling about the crack was right and it was. i still haven't experienced every possible scenario when it comes to working with clay, so i need to be open to failure if i'm going to grow. the cup is for
there was a kiln malfunction during a bisque fire that overcooked two of my pieces. one was a closed sphere vessel that was vitrified shut and stuck to like 2 other pieces. my wax melter, above, was salvaged by whoever made the tea cup it was stuck to. i was going to leave a note in the cup to say they can keep the wax melter because i think they looked beautiful (and would have been functional as a wax melter with its own dish) together but they took the cup before i could.
i tried glazing and refiring the melter and it came out awful and warped. the wax melter on its own out of the malfunction was quite nice and worked really well, but again i was curious as to what would happen if i tried to glaze it because i knew it wouldn't work well but i needed to see it for myself.
i am currently in hand-building through the end of the month and then i'm on my own to take everything i've learned from really talented people over the past year and find my voice in the clay. i have my own member shelf and cannot wait to spend my november really playing and experimenting more.
xoxo jenn