Ceramics II

Artist Statement

After completing a year of ceramics, in particular reflecting upon the second semester I believe that my experience was highly successful for a number of reasons. First and foremost, the amount of skills in working with clay, from building to maintaining to glazing, went from virtually no knowledge to enough to create larger, more complex, and more experimental projects with positive outcomes. In terms of my artwork itself and relationship to the process of creating, I would say that I have learned to better accept mistakes and struggles, to be patient with my work, and to at the very least be proud of the artistic process and steps I took to create something even if the final product isn't my favorite. Furthermore, when thinking back to my mindset of working with clay in the first semester as opposed to the second semester, I think I became a lot more accepting of and prepared to just try something without having every detail pre-planned and configured and allowing my ideas to come as I worked. 

In my art, I enjoy working with detail and intricacy, which takes time and patience that I struggle to maintain more working three dimensionally than just drawing two dimensionally. Perhaps it's that fact that it feels like one should get to a final product quicker when you are actively building, yet having to trust in taking my time and being patient with the process is definitely something I continue to work on. For instance, having perfectionist tendencies, when making a vessel I generally want it to be perfectly even all the way around, which makes the building process long and frustrating if it starts digressing from how I imagined. Furthermore, I enjoy my ceramics being a smooth as possible, which is completely achievable given the right tools and, you guessed it, patience. This step, like the building process of a larger piece, requires time for the clay to set up, and I find it most difficult to leave my piece in an unfinished state despite knowing I will return to work on it the next day and can't fix it in that moment because it's simply not possible yet. Overall, this is something I continue to work on, however just trusting that taking the time to do it right is worth more than being unhappy with my final product as a result of rushing it generally has helped me be successful.

From the projects we completed this semester, my favorite was the Eccentric Teapot project, for which I made a sculptural and likely not functional teapot. I enjoyed this project the most for a number of reasons, firstly because of the amount of research that went into considering my design as well as the sketches I did to ensure and smooth construction process. I was super happy with the building of my teapot and the final shape it took prior to glazing as it came together very similar to how I imagined based on my sketches. As mentioned in the paragraph above, patience is not always my strong suit when it comes to ceramics, and I felt incredibly unmotivated and uninspired when thinking about how to glaze my project. After about two classes of avoidance from this project, I decided to just go in without a plan, again something I was trying to work toward, and ended up being super happy with the glaze. As it was underglaze and I only did one coat, I had no idea how it would turn out, yet I was pleasantly surprised with the color and the texture and how it pulled the entire piece together. Overall, I am super pleased with the skills I learned and the projects I completed in ceramics this year, not only was it an incredibly enjoyable art class to start the day with, it also gave me a range of techniques and skills to continue to employ in both my ceramic and two dimensional art in the future.