A Peak Inside my Portfolio: Figurative Sculpture

This sculpture class is really taking it's toll, but I believe I'm pretty much caught up and in a good place to finish the semester strong! My last portfolio post discussed my Social Issue Additive Sculpture (check out that post here!), which is now completed!

I'm happy with the way it turned out and even more importantly, I'm happy that it's done!

Our second assignment was to create a manipulative sculpture. So instead of adding pieces or constructing, we are to take a material and manipulate it. I used clay for this piece. In addition to being manipulative, the sculpture also had to be figurative. Most students were doing a bust (head and shoulders) so I did a torso, to try something different. As with most of my pieces recently, I wanted to add an element of fiber arts to my design. To that purpose, one half of the torso will be constructed by weaving.

These two images are the front and back of my torso after the first day of working. I was simply building the piece and roughing in the different body parts. My goal was to continue to build up the piece while paying attention to musculature and bone structure underneath.

After my second day in the studio, I had almost finished the piece in relation to size, but you can see from the butt that I was still working on getting the correct shapes and proportions for all the anatomy.

At this point, I thought I was done! But as my husband pointed out, the butt is very tight and firm and the front look like it belongs to someone who maybe doesn't work out as much. Or as a fellow student put it, 'it looks like it has a Sponge Bob butt' So I went back to work refining the overall shape.

Now I can say that I am all done with the clay portion! I'm waiting for it to dry out and then in the kiln it goes. I believe I will stain it instead of applying a glaze. More to come on that. Now for the weaving part:

As you can see along one side I have made holes. There are dowels that will fit into those holes after firing is complete. These dowels will then become the warp form my weaving portion of the piece that will make up the entire left side of the torso! Hopefully that will be done soon! Now we're onto Subtractive Sculpture (carving), wish me luck!

What's Going On in the Classroom: Clay!

Yay for clay! During 4th quarter, my room is completely transformed into a clay studio! Okay, that's only my wishful thinking. It's still the same old room, just with lots of clay dust and lots of enthusiasm for making things with clay! Students are starting out with a pinch pot and then one other small vessel either built with slabs or coils. Here is where we're at so far:

Cupcake Containers- Kindergarten

In Kindergarten, our curriculum calls for teaching the students how pinch and roll clay to make a piece of artwork. We decided to make clay cupcake containers! The kinders were so excited!
First we had a day where we just got comfortable with the clay. Students smushed and smashed and made all sorts of things, but at the end of the day, they had to give the clay back.

During the next class, we talked about how air bubbles can form in the clay and how we need to get rid of those so our pieces don't explode in the kiln. We all wedged our clay and then rolled into a ball. Using thumbs and then pinching, students made a hole and then enlarged it. This created a small pinch pot. I showed everyone how to use their fingers to smooth the top edge. Then using a small wooden tool, students created a cupcake holder texture on the outside of their pinch pot by lightly etching vertical lines into the clay.

For our third class, students rolled out a looooong 'snake' of clay. A lot of students had trouble doing this at first, but after a kick start from the teacher, they got along just fine. Then the clay was laid on the edge of the cupcake bottom (which is by now dry so it's more sturdy!) and coiled around until it came to a point. I did a quick demo on how to lightly smudge the clay together so that the coiled 'snake' would stick. ( I also went back after the kids had left and made sure they were all secure, mostly on the inside of the coil so as not to ruin the frosting effect.) The kids then rolled out small balls of clay to attach to the top as cherries!

Out last class was painting/glazing the cupcakes. Since I have a limited amount of glaze, the students got to select a glaze for the icing and then we painted the cherries red. We're still waiting to do the last step, which is to paint the cupcake holder or the bottom of our cupcake container. We will be using tempera paint for this so that the kids have a wider variety of colors to choose from. They are so cute and charming. For the record, I borrowed the idea from a picture I saw on Artsonia, found here. I modified it a bit for kinders and I simply used this project to teach clay techniques, we didn't talk about Wayne T. It was so fun to do this project, the littles love clay!

Clay!

I missed a week of posting! Last week was crazy! I was out for a couple of days because I am participating in a professional learning cohort on 21st Century Learners and Education. Hopefully as that research develops I will be posting more about it. But for now, suffice it to say that it kept me busy last week and I wasn't able to post.

Maybe it's insane of me but the 4th grade classes are doing pinch pot bowls and spoons out of clay before Christmas break! We are attempting to have them all done by then so that they can dry out and I can fire them before the students get back in January. Then students can take their time glazing their pieces. I wanted to do these classes early to also have time to do clay with other grades depending on the supplies we have left.

 

So last week we had a day where we talked about the basic terms involved in making things with clay. Firing, Leather Hard, Bone Dry, Coil, Pinch, Slab etc... click here for an awesome worksheet to hand out to students. We learned about the tools of a ceramicist: loop tool, clay knife, wire tool, rib etc... and also we looked at some non-traditional tools that could be used such as a comb or a fork or material. We also took a mini tour of the kiln so that everyone knew what it looks like and what it does. Then students spent the second half of class simply experiencing the medium. The excitement in the room was inspiring! I don't have to work very hard to get everyone pumped up about making things out of clay.

This week students are going to be making the spoons. And then next week they will make bowls. Their only guidelines are it has to be in a pinch pot style and they must use texture of some kind and the bowl and the spoon have to obviously belong together. They can make that connection however they want; similar style, texture or coloring.

On a side note, I was asked to hang some of our fabulous student artwork up in the administration building. It looks great! Here some of the photos: