Matryoshka Dots
For my spring art show, my idea came to me when a friend of mine recommended that I try a style similar to the Russian Matryoshka dolls. From there, I used my inspiration photos to bring the rest of my art show idea together. For the first part of my art show pieces, I threw four different vases that curve inward. In order to get this form, I threw a cylinder then pushed the top inward. I had trouble throwing vases that were different sizes, and I spent most of my time working on getting the size portions correct. Another challenge I had was trimming the vases. Since the top of the vases were curved, I couldn't trim it like a regular cylinder. I had to use large lugs of clay that went all the way up to where the wall straightened out, and even with that I still struggled with many of my pieces flying off. With extra time after the completion of my vases I was able to further push my skills and try to make plates for the show. Throwing the plates ended up being easier than expected and I was relieved to find that trimming the plates was a lot easier than trimming the vases. Glazing was one the hardest parts of my project, and took a lot longer than I had expected. For the glazing of my pieces, I wanted to do a design based off of an art movement I learned about in a class from the previous semester called Pointillism. I tried many different objects in order to get the right sized dots, and I ended up sticking with the end of a toothpick for the larger dots and the end of a large paperclip for the smaller dots. I first dipped all my pieces into white and then added the dots. I had a hard time creating the line going across all four vases, and adding three layers of gaze to each dot was time consuming. The glaze colors I used for my dots were blue grass, isle blue, and blue dawn. All in all, having never worked with clay before, I was excited to try something new. The creation of my art show pieces helped me push myself to try new techniques in ceramics. I really enjoyed taking ceramics one this semester and I can’t wait until next year to take ceramics two.