 I wanted to create a form that had connected elements using the ovoids and spheres I had used previously but with some movement so that some sections were elevated away from a flat visual plain. I used a range of different props and broken kiln shelf to support the elevated parts. I realised after that I should have used clay wads between the prop supports that wouldn't shrink in the firing, as the clay shrinkage may have caused breaking/cracks or movement I didn't want. As it turned out I didn't need to be concerned as it never even got to the kiln in one piece! I make most of my pieces directly on a kiln shelf and as I was loading this onto the shelf to await the kiln, I caught the edge of the shelf as I lifted it and the jolt was heavy enough to knock the supports out from underneath causing the fragile dry greenware to break off and because of the nature of the construction it was like dominos tumbling, the whole thing had to be reclaimed!!!  I retained a couple of sections of the piece to fire and use as glaze testing pieces.
This was another disastrous making day, and I had no one else to blame other than myself and my lack of coordination!! I came across some intriguing structural glazes on Instagram by an American artist called Phillip Kupferschmidt. He uses a gloop type glaze to create stunning 3D effects on clay, his colours are very bright and vivid, but the way they look on the surface of ceramics had potential for my fungal inspired forms, and as I was still wrestling with what to do with the surfaces I thought it was worth some more experimentation. I had already found the recipe on Glazy and had had some success with the test results that I mentioned in a previous post. I was trying to work out how to get the gloop to attach more effectively to the bisqued surface, and it seems that applying underglaze first is the way forward so I had a little play with some pieces I had left over from breakages and on some other work that had been made to test on. Below is an image of Kupferschmidt's work.  The piece below was sprayed with blue underglaze, over a black stoneware clay body. I attached random blobs of gloop trying to make it drippier, gloop has a high quantity of Nepheline Syenite and is a similar consistency to egyptian paste. I twisted the different colours together in a nerikomi style to see if the glaze would melt and the colours bleed into each other. The results were disappointing, despite the use of underglaze, lots of the gloop fell off and the black clay just swallowed up all the blue underglaze.  There is no doubt I could have continued to push this and I think eventually it would have resulted in some successes, but I also recognised that this gloop 'rabbit hole' was a distraction because I was feeling disheartened and had gotten restless. Despite the rather fun 'Skittles' look of gloop I drew a line under taking it any further on my MA.
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AuthorStella Boothman Archives
August 2024
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