Sgraffito Clay

Artists Statement

These art pieces are created from an idea inspired by the shape of the clay that I chose, the shape of a mountain was the most appealing element that the shape reminds me of. Then a picture of Mount. Fuji comes to my mind. Mount. Fuji is an active volcano located in Tokyo, Japan, there are a variety of beautiful pictures of the volcano online. Mount. Fuji is one of my favorite volcanos out in the world that I want to visit.

For the scratchboard version of the volcano, I used a small piece of scratchboard and scratched out the design with needle-like tools. Once, finished the scratching on the scratchboard, I moved on to the clay. The clay was clay that was already fired and hardened, I used scratching tools that are more sharp and narrow to scratch the topcoat off to create the black and white difference. Lastly, we fired it again to make the final.

I started the piece by starting a draft/design on scratchboard. I traced the shape of my clay onto the scratchboard to make it the same size. I started my drawing by scratching out the differences that I want. Once, I got the details on the design, I scratched the same design with a pencil on the fired clay. During my scratching of the clay, I realized that this piece looked more like a mountain, not a volcano; therefore I decided to add some positive(white) space to the top of the clay. One difficulty that I had was the surface of the clay, since the clay had some bumps and dents, I had difficulties in scratching the design out clean. Lastly, I put the clay into the kiln and fired it for the second time.