Coil and Carve

Artist Statement

The assignment was to create a pot using the coil technique, and then carve away from it to create more texture on the surface. The subject of my creation was a small pot with the 8 phases of the moon carved away on the surface. The work was made by coiling clay and then pushing it together with a metal scraping and softening tool. I let the pot get leather hard (a bit more like hard leather hard because it took me a bit to get to carving it) and then carved out the circles that would be for the moon. I used wooden handled tools with metal rings on the end, which were very effective. For the glaze I used C-20 (dark blue) and glossy black and white.

The piece was designed to be just a bit off-symmetrical. For the most part, there is a clear pattern with the way the phases of the moon lead to the next, but the circles are slightly different sizes, which creates an interesting effect. The project took me a bit to start because I had trouble figuring out how to make the coils stay the right hardness between leaving them for a day or two, and coming back to work on it. Originally I was just intending to have one circle, and then one turned into two, and so on and so forth. When I came to glaze them, the idea of a moon seemed obvious because there were 8 circles, and it fits into the overall round, and soft shape of the pot so far. I went through a lot of color combinations for this piece, and eventually found what I wanted to use which would create enough contrast, but also not seem scattered.

The story behind the work emerged more when I started to glaze. The glazing is what makes the pot more unique, because it really ties it all together. I wanted there to be a deep blue somewhere on the pot but wasn’t sure where. I am most proud of the time I spent to get the circles smooth. That part took a lot of time, especially because the pot was in the very hard leather hard stages as it had sat for a while. I struggled to glaze it because there was a lot of precision needed to make sure the phases of the moon were distinct. In using black and white glazes I wanted to ensure that I didn’t end up with any milky grey areas. I would like to have spent more time on the rim and making sure that matched the circles on the pot, to create a bit more unity.