2004.5 - SHOE

This is another of my ‘goof on the instructor’ final exams. Norma Lyons asked us to make ‘a shoe, and the creatures that live in it’. Not something I was excited about doing, so I had a bit of fun. In Chinese, the word for lion is shih. This sounded enough like shoe for me. The inspiration for the lion’s form was an illustration of painting on Meissen porcelain done in 1735 or 1736. The animal shown is a kylin, a ‘composite animal with a fierce appearance, but a gentle nature’. This painting, in turn was likely inspired by Chinese or Japanese ware, or by the large statues of lions that appear in front of important Chinese buildings. The illustration came from the book, Zoo, Animals in Art, by Edward Lucie-Smith. The creatures that live in the shoe are the members of my family: myself, my husband David, and my sons Michael and Matthew.

This was a complex piece for me to make. I even made a small macquette to work out the structure of how the pieces would go together. I really like making fish and birds better, because making four legs is a nuisance. Fins are so much easier. I was feeling quite brilliant though when I thought about how to form the feet. I threw them on the wheel. They consist of a flat plate with a short tube through the middle. Then I cut off about three quarters of the plate around the tube, and form the toes out of the remaining. Voila, feet on short, strong legs. Since then, I’ve used this technique whenever I need strong feet and legs to support an animal with legs. The body is made of two thrown spheres connected by a hand-built tube. I cast all of my family’s faces and put them in the shoulders. I have the front right, David the front left, Michael the rear right, and Matthew the rear left.

The neck and face are hand built. Making the face was new for me since I’d never made a mammal before. It was almost an out of body experience. I added clay to roughly make the face. Then I put my hands on it, and almost without looking; I stroked the clay until it felt as I imagined a lion’s face might feel. I was amazed when I looked at it. I had a Siamese cat when I was a kid; maybe that’s how I knew what a lion should feel like. For me, it was really weird working so intuitively. The tail came from the hydraulic Play-doh factory. I do love using it. It gives me such a feeling of power.

The piece is unglazed, but it was fired in the soda kiln, which gives it a varying warm brown color and a soft, orange peel texture.