Artist Inspired Creation

For this assignment, we were required to research any contemporary artist of our choice, and we need to use their work as inspiration to create our own piece. The artist I chose uses human parts, and turns them into pieces of nature as if something was growing from them. I chose this artist because she reminded me of a piece I did a few years ago and our inspirations were the same, and therefore wanted to recreate the piece I had previously made but with new techniques and different inspirations. Therefore I chose to keep the hand design, but instead, I wanted to open the arm and put plants in them as if they were growing out of a cut in the forearm.

In order to create this piece, I first started out with my sketch. Then I was given three pounds of clay, and that was all I had to work with for the entire project, and therefore had to think through every piece I used. After I began rolling out a big coil, I flattened out the bottom and top in order to get the unique cylinder shape that a forearm has. Then a formed a big ball and attached it to the top for the palm of the hand, and attached smaller coils that were cut to size for the fingers. Then I carved out most of the forearm, and smoothed the inside and edges in order for them not to be sloppy and too thin. Next, I created the flowers and plants and filled the forearm with them, now just awaiting for it to be fired. After the first bisque firing, It was time to glaze. I chose very light, neutral colors, and white for the hand the glazes were HF-11, SM-10, SM-51, and SM-44. After it was glazed and glaze-fired, I was able to call it a finished piece.

There were no revisions or edits I needed to do during this piece. It just took a lot of time to finish. But there was a very creative aspect of it when creating different unique flowers and plants for the arm. It was very difficult to figure out all the different pieces I wanted to make, while also not making the arm look too busy. The research aspect was the biggest part of this assignment, and studying the artist I chose was very interesting. In the end, I am very happy with the results.

Artist Inspired Research: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/11L_ajNknZ7-dZ U3XjpoeG4OFJGdGwMSm51M9m8M2HY/edit?usp=sharing