The assignment for this project was to address an issue in society using some part of the body and text. I chose gun violence because there had recently been a school shooting and gun violence was and still is, a very big issue. I started my project by making three half spheres and using the first one for a base. I then connected the other two with slipping and scoring. I then slipped and scored my full sphere and my half sphere together after making the full sphere more into a head shape, so there was a head on a neck. I needed to incorporate text into my piece and so I carved the words stop killing for the mouth. I wanted to continue this theme of objects and words for face characteristics and so I made a gun for the nose and two guns for the eyes. The two guns were pointing up to a bullet hole in the forehead. I still feel like I needed more text so I carved out the letters PEACE and attached them to the top of the head. This played into the theme of ending gun violence with piece. The last thing I did was carve a gun into the back of the head and carve an X through it to show that guns are not ok. For glazes, I used a PC-2 Gold for the guns and stop killing and a PC-1 Metallic for the peace and X through the gun on the back. Lastly, I used PC-30 Temmoku for the rest of the head.

In this piece, I used shape and line. I varied between lines to write my words and raised letters in the shape of the letters. This created different levels of clay in my piece which added a cool effect. I arranged this piece so the center would be the guns and so the viewer could look down and see the two motivational messages, the stop killing for the mouth and the PEACE on the top of the piece. This project evolved from the head with the guns and and the stop killing mouth to the sculpture with the PEACE and the gun crossed out on the back. When I looked at my original piece I thought that it was boring and could be more interesting and so I incorporated these aspects into it.

The meaning of this artwork was to illustrate an issue that has been on the news a lot recently and needs to be addressed. I am proudest of the PEACE turned out on top. It was really difficult to make the big letters look good and attach them to the top so that they wouldn't fall and I was happy with the way that it turned out. I struggled getting the piece to look more interesting. I solved this by adding the additional elements but I still feel like the face could have been more interesting for my final product. I also could have incorporated cleaner lines on the gun on the back of the head and made it more clear that the purpose was to carve a gun with a cross through it to illustrate "no guns." Besides these minor things, I was happy with the way the glazing and final product came out.