Now that I am waiting to glaze my vase after it finishes firing, it’s time to move to the next piece. For my next piece, I am creating 2 mugs. I am continuing these mugs with the same female figure theme around the entire form with each mug having different positions of the female figure. This theme will show up throughout all of the work that I will be doing this semester. Later on I will also be creating paintings similar to the ceramic pieces.
In addition to the mugs, I also included braided handles to tie in the female theme because who wears braids in their hair? Women and girls. At first I was going to do a simple twist for the handle as a way to represent the idea that people and their figures are not perfect, in fact so imperfect that everyone has their own curves, but then I thought…what looks like a twist but is related to women. So I concluded with the braid idea. I really liked this idea because after I executed it, the product was satisfying and I enjoyed how I was able to come up with similarities in every part of my art, regarding this theme.
Once I carefully placed my braid handles on the mugs, I went back through and started to carve more out the figures to start to give each of them more shape. This is one of my favorite parts because I love how each little piece of clay flies off so then I can add it to my slip bucket. It may be strange why I enjoy this, however it is something I love. I also love it because once all of the figures are finished being carved out and smooth, it brings life to my work and it makes me feel as though I am speaking through it.
Out of all of my time here at Marywood, and even my time before, this themed project idea has to be my favorite. I love all of the work that I have done in the past, it has gotten me to where I’m at now as an artist but this project is by far my favorite because I resonate with it and it is about one of the biggest issues in society that I am personally connected to. One may say, as an art therapy student, that this work is allowing me to express my personal self through artwork, I am simply doing art therapy while creating work for a different class.
