It's (Almost) the End

It's not the end (of the world) came out of the kiln today.


Here's an interior view with some of the pieces in place. I expect that I'll touch up some of it with acrylic paint or acrylic inks. I'm not sure what it needs yet.

I like the rough little nucleolus and its little holder.

Here are a couple of the larger pieces. Someone at the studio who saw them asked, "Do they open up?" And I had to laugh because I was glad that they were already provoking some curiosity.

This is what the inside looks like when it's empty. I attached a lot of the pieces because when I made this (in February!), I was still trying to decide whether or not to attach bits. I've come down mostly on the side of not attaching anything, simply because I like the empty shell, too.  (But not attaching things has its own problems, since with nothing to hold onto, other pieces can't climb the walls, so to speak.)

This mottled, pierced things is the nucleus.

I don't feel like this piece is finished somehow, and not just because of the need to add to it with some acrylics. There's some lack of balance somewhere, whether it's hiding somewhere in the degree of texture or in the color, I don't know. I just know that I'm not yet satisfied with it. Also, this is the least secretive of the early cells--but also the largest of the early cells; I had a hard time focusing on hiding secrets in among the pieces simply because I was focusing on building larger that I had before. Of course, the newest cells are even larger, so now that I've solved part of that problem I can start adding secrets in again.

Big Cell (THIS IS NOW) is drying, waiting to be bisque fired, but I decided that it's going to have a twin, Big Cell II (NOW IS NOW). That's next in line, construction-wise, even though I'm glazing all the time too. (These are glaze-time intensive). Weekend before last I made a maquette for a "lidded" cell, which looks like a rough (very rough) sphere when it's put together.

I'll keep on with these until either The Brain gets bored of them or I get one that I am absolutely in love with. Luckily neither of those things is on the near horizon.