The final semester has been all about refining and honing pieces, there have been a number of problems with construction and glaze, and I have allowed myself to become distracted at various points with makes that have moved away from the core work I was constructing.

However, all the piece’s that are exhibited both in the show and as part of my assessment still carry the same narrative. They are all inspired by fungal forms, are abstract sculptural shapes and are all connected together  in some way. I have experimented with numerous ways of connecting the work, glazing the surfaces and refining the makes and am very proud that I have been able to retain this narrative whilst taking risks, developing ideas, getting things wrong, failing lots and learning so much. 

The process has been emotional, physically and mentally challenging and there have been many times when I just wanted to stop and walk away, but I didn’t, and that is the job! The job of the artist is to be brave, brave enough to tell your story, in your own words and then put it out into the world and I fell that this is what I have done.

Success is a funny thing to quantify, it’s subjective and fickle, people’s tastes, aesthetic trends, the current political epoch and capitalism all play a role. I can only measure it from a personal perspective, am proud of everything I have achieved on this MA, academically, as an artist and personally.  I am leaving with having successfully achieved my goal for embarking on this journey, to find a way to develop my own Artists Voice and I feel like I am leaving with the seeds planted to continue to grow and develop this in the future. I know it never stops, and will continue to evolve, but am thankful and grateful for having the time and opportunity to grow amongst such a supportive group of students that will be lifelong friends and with teachers with such great skills &  knowledge.

Unfortunately the holes in the back of the wall piece were not the correct shape to enable them to be securely mounted directly onto the gallery wall with screws. This meant that I would have to mount them in a board. I deliberated a lot about what the background of the board should look like and I tried the pieces with some real wood and it looked too derivative of bracket fungus, I also tried MDF but it was too flexible and easily damaged, in the end I settled for plywood as it was stronger.

The initial plan was to have a white background so the mount board would blend in with the wall behind, however after consultation with Rob, my tutor I opted for black. I even ended up having to buy a second pot of black paint as the first option, an oil based egg shell was just too shiny on the second coat of paint! I eventually sourced  an oil based matt black which worked well.  

I mocked up the pieces in various configurations, I then laid them out on a piece of paper and traced one edge around the forms. This was then cut out to create a  negative space stencil that would help me guide the ceramic elements accurately into place as they were attached. I used a very strong black grab adhesive called CT1 to attach them as I needed something that would be very reliable and strong.

Below is an image of the wall piece hanging in the exhibition space, I am really pleased with the overall effect of this work and it has given me the confidence to develop my wall pieces and explore what other styles of wall forms I could make.

I wanted to include some oval ovoid pieces in my degree show, I had one that I was happy with but would have preferred a couple more options to choose from. With this in mind I constructed two different styles, a stacked piece and a connected sculpture. 

The connected sculpture had some lovely movement to it and I was pleased with how it had developed and all the connections had worked without any cracks or flaws. However I did have some sort of ‘mad’ moment and went completely off track with the glaze. I decided to use a thick oxide paste to try and create a metallic effect (its something that had worked for me before on a different coloured clay body). This work was in red stoneware and the resulting finish just didn’t work at all, I ruined what had the potential to be a very good piece of work, I was so annoyed with myself. I don’t know what made me do it, and I can only think that it was a combination of stress and panic affecting my decision making. Below are images of the piece with the oxide paste. I attempted to sand the oxide with a diamond pad to see if it would reveal a more metallic look but this was ineffective.

The stacked piece was more successful, I had used a new white stoneware clay described by the manufacturer, Valentine Clays as a cheaper alternative to T Material. I was looking for a white clay body that would cope with the stresses I was putting it under and  had bought a bag to test it out. It did not disappoint, it turned out to be a brighter tone than the ES40 and was really nice to work with.

I had deliberately curved one of the supporting posts for my stacked forms and planned to use that one for this piece. The graduating sizes were chosen to be assembled to give the impression of something biomorphic, I thought it looked like it was almost spinal but also plant like. See pictures below. 

I was very reluctant to glaze this piece, I enjoyed the simplicity of the surface as I thought it really highlighted the intricate details in the form. However after some discussion with my tutor Rob, it was agreed that I would use the black crawl glaze on this piece as well. See below.

After the success of my upscaled black piece I was feeling more confident about attempting one in white stoneware. I was careful in my construction process and spent a lot of time on refining the surfaces and ensuring the connections were an adequate thickness to support the free standing additions. I was really pleased with the overall outcome of this piece after the first firing. 

I chose to glaze this using the black crawl glaze, both to give consistency over the collection of work I was making and because I had finally resolved the problems I had been having with it. I do like the piece, but am not as keen on the black crawl as I am on the white and feel like a better glaze option needs to be explored for the white clay body and this is something I plan to do in the future. I may ultimately decide not to glaze the white pieces and fire to a higher bisque temperature enabling them to stay a whiter colour than the creamy white which occurs at around cone 8.

I was keen to try and make a large piece using white stoneware and had started to use ES40 from Valentine Clays as this had a more coarse grog than the ES20 white stoneware I had been using previously. Given the scale of the pieces I was attempting I knew that a more robust clay body would help the larger ovoids  hold their shape. 

Throughout the course I have made a large quantity of plaster moulds, and I needed to create some extra  ones to ensure that I had a sufficient number of graduating sizes available for use, as these are the starting point for forming the curved slabs for the construction of the ovoids.  Below are examples of these plaster formers.

Below is the largest ovoid that was used for the white stoneware stacked piece, the clay tubes used to connect the smaller protrusions to the larger bases are made from either hollow wheel thrown narrow cylinders or large hand rolled coils that are cut and pierced to create a hollow tube.

Despite following the same process of construction, and mocking up that I had done with the smaller scale pieces, over half the individual forms that were made for this pieces cracked during the bisque firing. The firing was a very slow firing with a 16 hour pre heat to dry out the work and initially I thought this was the prime reason why the cracking had happened. However when I examined the majority of the areas where cracks had occurred, I believe that they were formed during construction because the leather hard clay had been subjected to stresses that it could not cope with.

Below you can see cracks in different areas, some where around the holes that had been pierced in the clay ovoid using a tube cutter, the downward force had created stress cracks running out in several directions from the hole.

Other cracks were along the joining seems between the two halves of the slab, it would seem that repeatedly stacking the forms on top of each other at the leather hard stage had created too much stress and invisible cracks that couldn’t be seen whilst leather hard, opened up once the clay had shrunk and had begun to vitrify. See below image that shows this.

I was aware that the rapid drying would have also played a role in exacerbating what happened here, but the resulting outcome was one of disappointment and frustration. I had lost almost a whole weeks worth of work and time but I couldn’t let  it ‘hijack’ my momentum and impact on my motivation to keep going. So I took a day off completely and came back with a fresh pair of eyes, took away what I could from what had gone wrong and right with the last piece and started again. 

I made the next one using black stoneware, I didn’t stack them to mock up the forms, but used callipers instead to work out the positioning of each element, I marked the holes out gently then cut with a fine blade rather than pushing in a circle cutter. This time the forms came out fully intact after there bisque firing. See below

Below are the forms stacked prior to the glaze application, a white crawl glaze will be used on this piece.

Building on the smaller scale black and white stoneware stacked forms I decided to make one in grey stoneware and also to attempt a larger scale one in white stoneware, at a scale that would be big enough to become a floor standing piece.

I followed the same principles of making the forms that I had done previously, and mocked up the stacked effect whilst the pieces were leather hard to decide which orientation and position worked best. I then numbered the pieces so they could be reassembled post firing.

The forms are constructed in a very simliar way to those that are standalone sculptural works with multiple connections, the challenge was to determine how to manage the spaces in between the separate components so they would both sit correctly and look balanced and this took a degree of trial and error to get right.

Below are the separate grey stoneware clay components after bisque firing,.

Deciding what glaze to use on this piece  was tricky, I didn’t particularly like the black crawl on the grey, I felt a bigger contrast was needed so I opted for the copper carbonate lava glaze I had used previously. I wanted the glaze to create a sense of flow and movement, so stacked the bisque forms onto the supporting stand before applying the glaze, these pieces were then supported in the kiln with clay posts to ensure the glaze stayed clear of the kiln shelf.  Below is the piece with glaze applied.

The steel support posts made for all of the stacked forms would be trimmed at the top after the final glaze fire to allow for further shrinkage of the clay body. Below is an example of the posts I had made, I was planning to deliberately rust the bases of these stands as I felt that the warm colour and decayed  look would compliment the work.

I was really pleased with how well this concept had translated into a piece of sculpture, I think it works well and has a very different look to the more traditional ceramic totems that I have seen before. 

I was determined that I would have at least one large scale plinth piece for my MA show, I had already made a few successful small pieces that had been exhibited in Wales, but had had lots of problems when it came to scaling up. Either because flaws and cracks developed during the firing or that the finish just wasn't of a good enough standard. However by the time I had gotten around to tackling this piece I had pretty much resolved most of these issues and knew what needed to happen to maximise the best outcome. 

The below piece is a culmination of the trial and error of making and failing and I was really pleased with the final outcome, I am planning to exhibit this piece as part of my MA show and am am also planning a white stoneware piece on a similar scale.

process

the results

Following on from an earlier idea of a wall piece, and thinking again of using the components of my sculptures in a different way I decided to create a set of ovoids that I would then cut the bottom off and add a flat base to so that when pierced at the back, could be hung on a wall.

After initial firing I chose to use a lava glaze with a copper carbonate addition to create a green effect that would work well with the red stoneware. Above  is an image of the components after glaze firing.

The initial plan was to hang these directly on the gallery wall as a small installation, however I realised that I hadn't made the holes in the back of the pieces correctly, I should have used an inverted keyhole style hole so they could be anchored onto a screw head, I had just made round holes which, given the weight of the pieces would cause them to drop away from the wall at an angle rather than sitting flush. This meant that if I was going to use them I would have to rely on a very strong contact adhesive. 

Two things had happened that both had a bearing on the development of this idea. I had seen a stacked form made from bees wax (see below) at an exhibition called 'When Forms Come Alive' that I had visited earlier this year. For more info please head to my write about this here www.weebly.com/editor/main.php#/  I had also seen some interesting stacked, totems at Ceramic Wales made by a ceramic artist called Guy Routledge. (See below)
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I started to explore ways in which I could stack these forms that would still make them look connected and organic. I was ken to avoid any linear look to these pieces as I was concerned that they may end up looking like the popular beach pebble stacks that pop up everywhere!

I began by using a base and rod that I borrowed off Rob my tutor, and experimented with different ways of stacking the circular forms using one central hole and no connecting segments. I did like how this looked, it is the first image below left, but I still felt it was too uniform and rigid, I needed something with more movement. I then experimented with placing the holes off centre to the left or right and then using small rings of clay in between cut at angles to create spaces in between each segment, see middle image below. I liked how this looked but wanted to see if I could further develop the idea by adding on extra segments onto the ovoids in the same way I had connected them when creating a sculpture designed to sit on a flat surface, see image far right and below. I thought that this final version worked really well and discussed this with my tutor and my peers and there was a lot of positive support for its potential. 

I decided I was going to try and create several versions of these forms using different clay bodies with different clay finishes, some of which I hoped could be used for my MA show. I was keen to see if I could also scale up the work and make a larger floor standing version.

I needed to consider how I would support the pieces and did some research into the best materials to use for the central stand. I concluded that steel rod and tube welded to a steel base would be best and went over to see if I could commission these from our engineering department at UCLAN. After some discussions a plan was agreed and the bases and stands would be fabricated there. I chose different heights of rod with corresponding bases of different diameters, I was confident that due to the weight of the ceramic components these would be sturdy enough not to tip over once assembled.

I have been guilty throughout this course of being distracted, as someone with newly diagnosed ADHD I am less harsh on myself when this happens than I have been before. The initial stages of making my pieces is somewhat repetitive and usually I am able to get into a flow state when am making the separate components and it isn't an issue, however there are occasions when this isn't the case and that is when my mind starts to wander and I start looking at different ideas. I think that this is also a very important aspect of how I develop as a maker. It stimulates creativity and new ideas and it also presents me with new technical challenges I have to overcome so I never really see it as a negative, though I do recognise that it should be a part of my development and enhance what I am doing and not just utilised as a throw away whim. 

I decided to use a template to connect these pieces, they were made initially as three slabs with mitred joins, they were then slipped and scored together and paddled into more elongated rounded forms once enclosed. The forms were then left to firm up until they could be refined and honed using a surform and steel ribs. After the forms were refined they were slipped and scored together, these pieces were made using a red stoneware with a medium coarse texture.

I did like they way the pieces looked when they were joined together and I will definitely make more, but would perhaps not choose to use red stoneware as the colour after a high fire isn't particularly nice, it loses the red vibrancy and becomes a dark red that looks a bit like offal!

Below is the piece after firing, I chose to use a fuller glaze covering because of the red, this is a tenmoku glaze with a white tin glaze over the top which when combined creates this mottled looking effect on the surface of the clay which I knew would work well on this piece. I then overlayed these glazes with a silicon carbide based lava glaze with a black stain added to create this dark brown bubbling effect on the peaks. Overall I think this is a strong piece of work, however I also recognise that it doesn't necessarily 'fit' with the current body of work I am making.

This piece arose from left over ovoids after completing another sculpture. I rolled out a piece of clay, deliberately leaving the edges uneven in shape but ensuring the overall thickness across the piece was even. I laid out some of the plaster forms on the bench and then dropped the slab of clay on top of the forms so it would follow the hollows and curves of the shapes. Once leather hard I inverted the slab and attached the ovoids to the slab placing them into the hollow that I had formed. I then made holes in the back as I thought this has potential as a wall piece.

I got quite a few positive comments about this piece but I wasn't personally sold on it having any merit, I decided to glaze it to see if that would change how I felt about it.

Unfortunately, as you can see below, the glaze did not work as expected and the result was really disappointing. Am not sure I would do it again but it did get me thinking about how I could make work to go on the wall.