Final reflection
Final reflection:
The project I am proudest of is my blue lobster pinch pot summative. This project was one of the first projects where I really used clay with my hands, learning important techniques like effective pinching as well as the use of important tools. I really enjoyed this project because it allowed me to express my love of nature. I am a Maine native and I am drawn to nature and how nature is very important to our lives and impacts each of every one of us in a different way. I went with blue glaze on the lobster because lobsters can in fact be blue. Only one in 1-2 million lobsters are blue.
I am very proud I managed to get every pinch pot to be the same exact size, and that allowed me to really put the lobster together and show what I wanted it to look like. One of the things in particular that stood out was how I was able to make this project my own and make it inspired by my own imagination. Previous projects required us to mostly copy the subject. This project was a little challenging. Getting the claws attached and having the lobster sit upright is something I am still very happy with. I learned a lot from this project, especially being careful with how I handle clay and that prompted me to try and do better with my future clay projects.
The biggest takeaway from this class was the important techniques I learned and the skill that follows. I went into Ceramics thinking this class would be a very easy class and that I would do extremely well because I like to use my hands. In some ways, I have done really well, but overall there was a lot that I did not really know about clay at the start. This included how to use clay in a respectful way. It takes time for people to get good at something, and for this class, there were some struggles that I faced when I came into it. It took me a long time to get better at certain processes like coiling and blending my clay. This class drew me into the whole world of structural art and its impact on society.
I'm glad I had patient support during this class. Ceramics takes a lot of time to create something good. The biggest struggle with this class was meeting deadlines and that was a real pain for me due to the fact that I work slowly and that I got sick three times this semester. Being behind causes me to rush and that would prevent me from doing my best work. I thought it was very generous of my teacher to shorten a project that I missed to allow me to have time to catch up on things and not take points off it as a result of it being a smaller project.
In terms of class suggestions, it would probably be to have more glaze in the class. Part of what I struggled with was finding the glaze that I wanted to use for my pieces because it would always be out of stock. This was also tough because the cabinet would not have good enough labels for which glaze goes where, and it was always a pain to look for them because sometimes they would not be there and instead be in another cabinet under the tables.
I have enjoyed this class a lot, and though I wish I could take ceramics 2 next semester I am very happy with the effort that I put toward getting through the first part of this art class.