Final Reflection

My artist-inspired cloud bowls are my overall favorite project from this semester. I am most proud of this project because I think I did a good job of picking a design that reflected my artist yet was something very different and unique. I am also proud of completing my bowls and getting them glazed and fired before the original exam period, we had limited time and limited materials for this project and I think my final project reflects quality despite these potential hardships. A big thing I learned from this project is that seeing other artists and thinking about the processes and meaning behind their art can help with coming up with ideas as to what to do for my work. This project also taught me how important it is to never blatantly copy someone else's work, but using others' work as inspiration is a completely different thing.

Before taking this class I didn't understand or even know many of the ways you can use clay, I knew about basic methods like pinch pots but was completely unaware of others like pulling a handle. I never really thought about how ceramic things were made and how the artist went about constructing them, but now after taking this class I am more aware of this and this allows me to appreciate ceramic art more. While taking this class I found that I like the slab method of construction clay. This class also taught me that I like ceramics, and I have decided to take ceramics 2 next year.

A recommendation I have to improve this class would be to not have the 10inches criteria for the historically inspired project. Though having to have our work 10 inches in some ways did allow us to work outside of our comfort zone, I think that it was just too much to work with. Having so much material to work with, at least for me personally, makes it harder to have the best quality of work. More material makes the entire process take longer thus also affecting the final quality of the work. And lastly, the 10 inches criteria simply used up to much clay. And the less clay we have available affects our other projects after the historically inspired.