Artist Inspired Research Project

For this project, the assignment was to find an artist whose work we liked. We then had to create a piece of artwork inspired off of that artists artwork. I found Isobel Egan, a artist who likes to work with squares and made a platter. I started out with a big slab of clay and rolled it in the roller which flattened it out into a long slab. I then found a rectangular piece of foam board and draped the slab of clay over it. This created the platter in rectangular form and then cut around the edges to get rid of the extra clay and leave just enough for the platter. Once I had let the platter harden a little bit, I took away the foam board and create square divets in the platter with a square piece of stick. I did this all around the base of the platter in lines. I then found a smaller squared stick and created divets in between the bigger divets in lines. Then, for the lip of the platter, I made more of these smaller divots and created holes on all four corners. Once that had been fired, I used PC-2 Gold to glaze the entire front side of the platter. Once I had done this, I used C-21 Cobalt to glaze the underside lip.

I tried to make a balanced pattern for this project. I wanted the squares to be in lines and look good in a certain pattern because that is the way the artist does it. I was pretty happy with the way this turned out because it looks really cool and balanced when you look at it. This project evolved from one with only the big divots, to one with the smaller ones as well. I thought that the big ones looked rather plain and bland by themselves, so I added the smaller ones to add flavor and make the balance and pattern look even cooler.

There was no real meaning or personal connection to my artwork for this piece. I simply thought that it could be a platter that we used and since I like food, I thought that it would look good with food on it. I am proudest of the glazing and pattern in this piece. I think the patterns of squares look really cool and the glazing of gold looks good with the patterns. I struggled with the shape and making the clay do what I wanted it to do for this piece. It was dry clay and because I combined two slabs to form this large platter, it was brittle at the connecting point and broke. If I could have made this piece stronger, I would have worked harder at attaching the two connected slabs so that it wouldn't have broken. However, I can easily Epoxy the two halves together and it can be good as new.