In this project, we were assigned to make a “look inside” sculpture. The idea was that we would have a sort of “surprise” found somewhere inside our project.

I think I might have been a bit confused about the concept, because mine isn’t exactly a surprise inside. The idea that I came up with was a vase of flowers, and the flowers have eyes in the center. I also had some monsters made out of Sculpey that I wanted to incorporate—I made them for fun, but I thought they fit the concept. After deciding what I wanted to do and sketching out the ideas, I started making the vase.

I haven’t worked with real clay since middle school, so I just kind of jumped in. I decided to make a coil pot, since I know how to do that—roll it out, scratch the surface, apply water, and attach the coils. It seemed pretty easy, but I wasted a couple classes on that. I also didn’t realize that the vase would need to dry out for so long before going into the kiln, so that ’s why I wasn’t able to have it done by the due date.

At home, I made my flowers. I rolled out a bunch of strands of green for the stem, made a bunch of flowers, and then attached the stems to the flowers using glue, after I’d baked them. I also painted the flowers some, since I wanted to add detail, and my fingers are too big and clumsy to be able to work delicately with small pieces of clay. I also made a bunch of leaves with the Sculpey, using toothpicks and such to add some texture. After all of those were done, I made some more monsters out of clay—it was fun, and I figured that even if they didn’t end up working with the project, I could always save them and use them in the future. After all of that was done, I put it together (putting flowers on stems, putting monsters on flowers) and then stuck it in a vase, so that I would have something to hold it temporarily while my vase baked.

This project was really fun, actually. I liked how open-ended it was, and how it didn’t have to have some sort of hidden meaning about politics or whatever. I also liked how I was able to make something just because I felt like making it—making the monsters was fun, and so was painting the flowers. I think that I made good use of color in this—using bright colors like this is normally difficult for me to do, since I prefer more neutral colors, or at least ones that don’t clash so harshly. If there was one thing I was really concerned about, it would be that I didn't really understand the project—the surprise portion wasn't really inside anything, but rather on the outside of the vase. Overall, I liked this project, and I’m feeling pretty okay about the outcome.