Sgraffito Animal

Artist Statement

** I glazed Pablo after I took these pictures so now he's shiny**

This is Pablo the polar bear. Making him was a pretty long process that took lots of steps and patience. The first step was to make an armature out of clay. The hardest part for me was making it hollow on the inside and connecting the limbs. At first, I was going to make my sculpture a fat dinosaur, but it slowly morphed into a polar bear, not exactly sure why. Once I had squished on the little stub tail and ears, the armature dried out and I smoothed out the dry clay. I then painted it with coats of black underglaze making sure to get in all the crevices. Once it dried, I drew with pencil what I wanted to scratch into the glaze. I scratched in a fish with legs, some waves, stars, moons, paws, mountains, and some little people/faces. All the things I scratched in reminded me of a polar bear's habitat. I decided to give the fish legs and was inspired by northeastern designs I found in Ms. Medskers book and online. I decided to change the sculpture to be a polar bear because I wanted to do make an animal that's endangered. I made it fat partially because I had already made the armature and partially because I thought it'd be really cute. There's also been images circulating of skinny polar bears who have been starving due to climate change. The images have moved people to see that climate change is a real issue and it's sad that it took showing people those extremes for some to realize the extent of the problem. In contrast, Pablo is a fat polar bear and he's pretty cute so make sure you help our planet and keep our polar bears healthy!