Clay Sculpture

"THE MO-EYE"

Clay, clear gloss finish, black glaze

3"x 1"x 4"

This piece draws heavy inspiration from the Moai sculptures on Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) in Chile, I have always admired them and this piece is not to make fun of or jeer at the Maoi in any way. I have always thought they were super cool figures and as my clay started to evolve from less of a tiki or monster head (as I had originally planned) into more of a yam shape, I decided a moai-like figure is what I should do instead. So I created a moai-like head and added my own spin to it by adding a singular eye ball. I did this once again not to remix the culture of the South Pacific but differentiate my work from it enough so that I'm not being disrespectful. There isn't a major message other than I really like the moai sculptures and I drew all sorts of little stories on the side of his head most of which involve the ocean in some way or another.

The materials I used were all given and or loaned to me and I used more tools than actual materials. The structure itself is basic clay with a black glaze and then a clear finish on it. I used a whole variety of tools in this project as depicted below ranging from a clay cutter to a household toothpick. The clay was rather frustrating to work with especially when shaping the head but once I had a general shape that I liked I was able to easily shape it as the clay was still rather malleable. The carving was a very delicate process in which I used a toothpick and scratchboard tool to get different thicknesses.

I made several sketches on different pieces of paper through out the process and some of these sketches are great and others are horrible. Like I said I originally had wanted to create a tiki inspired monster thing kind of like the coconut people from Moana, but I had over estimated my clay sculpting abilities and once my clay turned out looking more yam-ish than coconutty I decided to rethink. I shaped the head and then layered on the eye and mouth later with the classic scratch scratch water attach. This project was very fun to do but also one of the more frustrating things we have ever worked on, I feel like my clay skills improved exponentially because the only "clay skills" I had before I learned in middle school. Overall I'm pleased with how this came out and I think that the scragfitto aspect of the head looks really good.