Intro to pinch pot

For this assignment we were supposed to experiment with how to actually make pinch pots in order to familiarize ourselves with the process before making our summative. I decided to make a bowl, a mouse looking sculpture, and a mug extrusion. I made the bowl and the mouse by making pinch pots and slipping and scoring them together. You have to make sure to spray the table with water in order to keep the clay from drying out. The mouse needed more assembly and I added features using the pokey tool. I also used a metal clay scraper to try and smooth out the clay before it went into the kiln. I also used a sponge to wipe all the extra glaze off the bottom of the pieces before they go into the kiln. This is because the glaze melts in the kiln and if there’s glaze on the bottom of the piece it can melt to the kiln and be hard to get off. I also used brushes to paint the glaze on.

For the extrusion I picked out a shape for the cup that was put at the bottom of the machine. I then took some clay in a big clump, kneaded it to get rid of all the bubbles, and put it through the extrusion machine similar to how you squeeze the spaghetti looking strands out of the bottom of a play dough extrusion machine. I then cut the clay that came out of the machine and cut it to the length that I wanted it to be. I then cut out a bottom for the cup and attached it to the top. Finally I rolled a coil and made a cup handle. For the bowl I took some clay, rolled it into a ball making sure that there weren't any bubbles and used my fingers to make a big pinch pot. I then made a coil for the bottom and smoothed the sides out with the smooth side of a metal slay scraper. For the mouse I made small pinch pots, stacked them on top of each other, and slipped and scoured them and its other pieces on it. I used the pokey tool to add the buttons, and the nostrils on the nose. After these steps, I glazed all of the projects and they went in the kiln.

These assignments did not have much sentimental meaning with the exception of the mouse. The mouse reminded me of my friend Lucy and how we used to do art together and make drawings in math class. These projects relate to my life because I am always finding areas of improvement. It takes me a long time to do things in general so it took me a while to get these done but I felt if I spent more time I could’ve fixed some of the things I dislike about the assignments. Something that bothers me about the mouse is that I missed glazing a small part of it in like the crease of the bottom part of it. Something about the bowl is that I didn’t figure out how to properly smooth the clay until after the bowl was done so it is super lumpy. The clay is also different amounts of thickness which makes it not look very good. The same issue with the cup the top overlapped and wasn’t smoothed as well as I hoped. In addition to that, it shrunk more than I expected and the handle was definitely way too small to put your fingers in it (it was more like a tiny tea cup handle). I am proud that I was able to learn from my mistakes to apply things that I learned for other assignments and improve my skills and abilities.