Studio Daze

I got a few hours in at the studio on Saturday so I finished this little one. I was working on a base that Dave threw before we went on vacation. It was drying out pretty quickly, so I had to work fast. There is lots of wonkiness built into in this little piece as a result.

After I took these photos of the "finished" piece--ha--I tweaked it a bit more, reducing the size of the hands and sleeves and adding more texture to the sleeve. (There is a story I love about an artist--though I can't remember which one--being walked around a museum during the opening of a retrospective of his work. He had to be forcibly held back to prevent him using a pencil he pulled from his coat pocket to "fix" a drawing that was hung on the museum wall. I identify very much with that mind-set.)

Anyway, she is the piece I relate the least to for some reason.

Sunday was a long studio day. Dave was firing off a cone 6 glaze kiln and, for safety reasons, we prefer that at least one of us be there for (almost) the entire firing. It was Dave's turn to kiln-sit, so he went to the studio early and I slept in and arrived at the studio around noon.

When I arrived, the kiln was just above 1000 degrees. I started working on a new piece, also built on a bell thrown by Dave before we went on vacation. This one was a bit larger, though, and had been well wrapped enough that it was still pretty soft. The thrown part was about nine inches tall to start and ended at hip level in this pic. 

The spray bottle is 11 inches tall, so at this stage, the form is about 15-16 inches tall.

Because it was a little too round, I darted the top, taking about three inches out of the total circumference, then I paddled the form to start giving it a more human-esque shape. I added a coil to establish the waist. Saturday evening, I added the ruffled underskirt and flounces. That was based on a design from a reproduction of a Godey's Lady's Book from the late 1800s.

Sunday I came in and, before lunch, built up the form to the stage you see above. I stopped to take a picture here to remind me of this stage because it is one of my favorite stages in making these particular forms. It's not my favorite because of the look of the work, but because the shape funnels the smell of the clay upward, right into my nose, reminding me how much I love the earthy smell of the clay.

After taking some pictures, I added the shoulders, chest, back, and breasts. I established the neckline of the dress.

I wanted to make a sort of night queen sculpture, so I based the pattern on the dress (which is hard to see at this point) on Van Gogh's Starry Night painting. If you're familiar with the painting, you can see the stylized moon sitting over her breast.

I also added the cypress from the painting as a dominant feature of the dress.

I was just starting to carve in the detail and position the stars when I took this photo.

I'm excited to add color; I think the dark blues and greens of the dress will contrast nicely with the bone white skin and skull.

When I made the head, I gave her enormous eyes, turned upward toward the sky.

I realized, writing this, that the size may have gotten away from me a bit. The kiln is only 23 inches deep, so that's as tall as I can build. Ayyyiiiii! I will have to go and measure her to make sure she's not at that point already. If she is, that will kill my plan to add a crown of night-blooming flowers like jasmine and datura. If that's the case, I might add them as a cluster at the back, where the head and neck meet, with a few trailing over one shoulder.

I also have yet to add the arms of course, but I did get Dave to pose for a couple of pictures with his hands behind his back to give me something to work from. I may have her holding a sunflower--if I have the patience to make a sunflower!

I finished the dress, made a maquette for the arm and hand, then wrapped her up. I was done for the day!

During a break in working, I texted my friend Richard. I had a dream a few nights ago that Richard, who normally has sandy-blond hair, had dyed his hair jet black. I texted him to see if my dream was right. It wasn't of course, but the text led him to call me and we chatted for about 40 minutes. He's one of my few remaining studio friends from the old studio--though he left that studio a long, long time (maybe 10 years?) before I did. We've known him for about 17 years--about as long as we've known Judi (who we also met through the old studio) and Paul. Richard has a home studio now which he almost never uses because he's always working. He works mainly in the movie and television industry where he makes enough money to self-medicate what is probably a pretty serious case of adult ADHD. (That makes talking to him pretty interesting sometimes as he talks so fast that he could easily have as second career as an auctioneer.)

We haven't talked in a long time, actually, and his big news was that he's going to Thailand in a couple of days and staying there for the rest of the month. We made plans to get together when he returns.

After I hung up, I did a bit of clean up and then we got ready to leave. The kiln had finished up a while before, so there was nothing left to do. Neither of us felt like cooking, so Dave went by Dions and picked up some pizza and a salad and we had that for dinner.