Clay Animal Sculpture

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The subject of my creation is an aquatic dinosaur. This kind of dinosaur lived about 245 and 66 million years ago, in a time known as the Mesozoic Era. I created my piece of art with clay. Starting from the body I then added the neck, the head, the tail and lastly the flappers, the most fragile and complicated part to add. After I created all the parts I let the dinosaur dry and I successively scraped it to make it smoother. Once the piece was smooth enough I covered it with three coats of underglaze and I let it dry. When the artwork was dry I decorated it using the sgraffito technique and I carved into the underglaze the figure of a jellyfish. After I was done decorating I brought the sculpture into the kiln and I fired it. I decided to make a dinosaur because it is a specie of animal that doesn't exist anymore but that really fascinate me and since I was young I have always loved learning about them and discovering new information about them. The decoration is inspired by the marine environment in which this type of dinosaur used to live in.

In my work we can see a decorating technique called "sgraffito", that I used to draw images carving the underglaze and showing the clay that was under it. At first my plan wasn't to make an aquatic dinosaur, but a seal. However during the course of the production I realized that the features of the body and of the neck were definitely most similar to the ones of a dinosaur and I then decided to transform what was going to be a seal into a dinosaur.

This artwork brings me back to my childhood and what I used to love when I was younger and it makes me think about all the times my parents read me books about dinosaurs. If I had the chance to change something about it I would for sure try and fix the underglaze. I like how the decoration looks however I had some problems with the glaze since when the sculpture was in the kiln, the underglaze dried separated from the clay, making the artwork look a little odd.