Kenneth Baskin inspired project

For this project we had to look at the work of Kenneth Baskin, a ceramist how mostly works with creating things from slabs of clay. This project was a little different than most of the ceramic projects that we have had to this year because it was a stay at home project. We did not have clay to work with so we had to use other materials. Looking at Kenneth Baskin's work it reminded me of machines, his work is very simple and straight forward. His work is actually surprisingly large and made of out clay slabs. Looking at his work I began to think of ways that I could create something with the same mechanical look while doing the same thing but with out clay. I started by thinking of things that I could use to make slabs and still be able to mold and form to shapes.

I began this project with deciding that I wanted to use cans as my material, I felt that cans would be a cool material to try and play around with. I started by drawing out a design, I was inspired by one of Kenneth Baskin's work that looked almost like a chain. I wanted to create something like that but with the alternate material. After I had my plan drawn out on paper I began cutting the cans, I used some old scissors to cut the cans and cut outs of paper to help get the right sizes. I started by cutting out the rings that would be the base and connectors of the chain, each one of these connectors was about and an inch and a half long. In total I cut out about 16 connecters (only used 14 of them but had to replace one set that got a little messed up). Once I had the connecters done I began to cut out the strip that would hold the sides together, I did this by just cutting out strips and then rolling them so that they would fit into the connectors, once they were in the connectors I cut the ends and folded them down to keep the connectors from moving on the bars. I continued to do this until iI had made 7 sets of moving bars, originally it was just a long line of them that would move at each connecting point (kinda fun to play with!) but I ended up connecting both tail ends together to make a circle. I thought this made the project look complete and more interesting as it is a stationary piece of work and wasn't meant to be moved around and played with.

Reflecting back on this project made me realize that I actually kinda struggled. Everyday I would sit down to work on it and want to change it and make it better but never could come up with a good way to do that, everything I did took away from the simple mechanical idea that I wanted to have in this piece. So in the end I just stuck to my idea and worked through it. Another thing that was challenging was the fact that I could never seem to get the shape I wanted with the metal from the cans, something I think will grow and improve over time. because this material was so new to me I struggled getting it to look the way I wanted things to look. Overall I had a lot of fun working through some of the problems that I had and playing around with a new material. If I were to do this project again I would try and come up with a more complex idea that maybe involved some other aspects, but for this project I think that the simplicity of my design helped fit into the idea that I wanted it to have. Overall I had a fun time playing around with this project.