Multiple Pinch Pot Summative

Artist Statement:

For this project, we were assigned to show the techniques we had learned from the previous project to make something that consisted of 5 pinch pots and pinched forms. Going into this I wanted to make a little triceratops sitting in a broken egg, but the more I tried to think the logistics of it, the more I began to dislike that idea. That is when I turned to my other sketches. I'm not entirely sure what drew me to the chicken, but I ended up really enjoying creating it.

The materials used for this project were clay, various carving tools, and glazes. Using techniques learned and developed in the previous project we applied them to this project. The first thing I did was make two pinch pots and put them together to create the main body seen in the first in-progress photo. From there I created smaller pinch pots that turned into the head and the tail. After the basic form was created I took several different carving tools including needle tools, the ribbon tool, and wire tools, to create some texture to suggest feathers. I then decided I wanted more differing textures to break up the piece a little. That's when I added some feathers to the chest of the chicken and some extra clay to shape the wings. After all of these base components were complete I added the final touches including the beak, comb, and wobble. The chicken was then left to dry and bisque-fired. When the chicken was ready to be glazed, I knew I wanted to use HF-165 which I used on the previous project because I really liked how that color turned out. While glazing I tried a technique that I saw online where you paint over the divots that you want to fill with color and wipe off the excess, so the color is only left in the divots. I did this with C-1 to imitate the darker smaller feathers under all of the exterior feathers, and on top I layered CF-60 to be the rest of the exterior facing feathers. I used HF-167 to paint the beak and PC-20 to paint the iris of the eye.

Overall, I am pleased with the results. One thing I would improve if I were to do this again, is to clean up the C-1 glaze a little better before layering more glaze on top because it showed through 3+ layers, and I just think it would have made the project as a whole a lot neater. But other than that, I think that the finished product is great, and the chicken looks a little crazy like chickens are supposed to. Creating this was such a fun experience as I got to just experiment with a bunch of different tools and glazing techniques and in the end, I think that this experimenting turned into something really great and fun to look at!