Multiple Pinch Pot

For this assignment we needed to combine 5 or more pinch pots to create some sort of piece that we designed ourselves. My original draft I made on a piece of paper was of a bunch of turtles stacked on top of each other with a rock underneath them. My final product however was far from this. I started thinking about how I don’t like Knick knacks and how I could try and make it functional. As soon and I started creating the rocks and trying to connect them they looked more like macaroons so I decided to go with it. I created a functional jar that looks like macaroons stacked on top of each other with a single turtle on the very top. We used clay to make this project and focussed on hand building the pinch pots to get the final product. I also used the pokey tool to cut the clay strips for the filling of the macaroon as well as a a metal flat and ribbed tool to slip and score the clay together.

I started with making a slab for the base of the jar by just taking clay and whacking it until it was flat. I then started making the “rocks” but thought it might be cool to have a snake wrapping around the rocks so I make a coil to put in between the 2 rocks. At that point it looked like a macaroon where the rocks were the pastry part and the snake was the filling. I just decided to take that idea and go from there. I attached the macaroon centered in the slab and slip and scoured it. I then stacked a bunch of them on top of each other and and made a lid for the very top with a turtle and half a macaroon as the detachable part. I made the lid by taking the macaroon top and attaching a coil to the bottom of it so that the lid wouldn’t fall off and break if it was tapped.

This relates to my life because I sort of just go with the flow when it comes to certain things and try to make the best out of things instead of getting upset that something isn't going the way I initially intended. I am the proudest about the fact that I could get it relatively smoothed on the inside and painted roughly where I wanted the paint to go. I struggled with making the macaroons symmetrical and they are all different sizes. I thought that in the end it looked cool and if I had made macaroons they would have probably looked just as wonky. One thing I could do to make my art stronger is make my pinch pots the same thickness because I tend to make one side thinner than the other which makes it not as sturdy I think in the long run. I also wish that the color of the turtle and the snake came out darker. I put 3 coats of the same glaze I used on my pinch pot mouse but it came out super light for some reason.