Clay Sgraffito

Clay is a medium I have not really experimented with within the last two years. However, in elementary school, I remember making many pinch-pot animals of various shapes and sizes, all of which I didn't like because I was a perfectionist and the teacher's example piece always looked far better. In my first piece, Moonman, I tried to capture the energy of these misshapen pinch-pot creatures, because I knew that perfection was near impossible. Moonman is loosely based upon a tardigrade, and I chose a space-theme because tardigrades can survive in space without any form of protection, and might just be the toughest organisms on the planet. In my second piece, I chose to try to make a more perfect piece, while also keeping a stylized feel to the chicken. I wanted to make sure that Flew the Coop was a more meaningful and important piece as well. When it came to the sgraffito I felt as though I could use this piece as a way to talk about factory farms and large-scale farms in general. The chicken in Flew the Coop is worse for wear, it has stitches in some places, as well as band-aids, piercings, and tattoos. The randomness of the feathers also adds to this feeling of grime. I chose to create a prisoner-chicken, one that is stuck behind the bars of a small cell, denied of freedom. This is very much the case for many chickens stuck in factory farms, ones that stuck in tiny cages, laying egg after egg after egg until they die, they are true prisoners. For me, this is a sign of awful industrialization of something that used to be much more humane, and I wanted Flew the Coop to perhaps make people stop for a second and wonder why I may have portrayed the chicken in such a way.

This piece was created using clay, blue underglaze, and regular glaze. The sgraffito was accomplished using a rounded-tip clay carving tool, as well as a toothpick in some areas.

When I first began creating these two clay forms, I was striving for perfection, focusing on technical skill rather than what the piece was going to represent. As a result of this, I grew very frustrated with the first piece, Moonman before realizing that I would focus more on the personality of the character rather than how well the form was sculpted. I chose to create a tardigrade-like character simply because I think that tardigrades are interesting creatures, and as I mentioned above, the character became space-themed because I learned that tardigrades could survive in space without a spacesuit— however, I added one on the character so that the viewer understood the title, Moonman. In my second piece, I began the same way, focusing upon technical skills and growing frustrated with my lack of practice. Then I realized I could create a piece that was much more interesting and powerful than just a chicken (I should mention here that the chicken is based upon a character designed by my fried Finn). I had recently been reminded of the horrors of factory farms, so I chose to create a prisoner chicken.