Ceramics Monthly Research

Reading through the September 2015 edition of Ceramics Monthly my eye was caught by a piece made by Chad Gunderson. Gunderson had an interest in rocks and geology from a young age. He took his knowledge and skills to combine ceramics and geology to create his masterpieces. The best way to describe the piece of work that is shown in the magazine is to say it looks like an oddly shaped sponge. The piece is medium-sized, with a base color of brown with hints of medium blue throughout the sponge-like holes. Gunderson does his work in a multi-step process, starting with sketching his idea and then importing it into Adobe Photoshop in order to get a more accurate picture and design to follow. This piece in particular was sketched and everything on Adobe Photoshop then Gunderson started the creation process. He built a hollow high-fire clay mold and then bisque-fired it and filled it with glazes then fired it to a specific cone to get his final product.

Prior to seeing Gunderson’s work in this magazine, I had never seen this type of technique before. It is so intricate but so messy at the same time, the placing of the glaze seems like it would be out of place but looking at the sketch you can see it was planned. One question I have is how did he make the color be where he wanted it to be without it dripping through the other holes? And how did he go about making the holes, they are so small how did they not get ruined when handling the piece prior to firing? How long does it take for him to complete a piece from planning to finish? One last question I have is what type of glaze does he use on his pieces?