CCNY City College (CUNY) Ceramics Studio tour video

Video version of the photo blog

Transformation Girl

Lets talk about the transformation girl, she is the woman heralding the latest pot that I made.  I enjoy this one because she is something different, I suppose we do not call them butterfly people for nothing, she seems to be in transformation.  I feel like the figure with her braided head is an allusion to the early pre-Venus "Venus" sculptures or fertility goddesses.  There are wings on either side of her head, ascension of the mind. The bird on her chest, wings outstretched is mutating or rather metamorphosing into something else, it seems half butterfly, half bird, what is it? Its transformative, changing, ascension, she is female, she is not earth mother like my others, she is younger, easily moving into the changing patterns of life.  This is how I feel about her.  Next blog shows her on the entire pot, which happens to have a good number of butterflies sculpted on. 

Allegory of the Virginian Childhood

City College Ceramics Studio Pictoral Tour

Take a visual tour of the City College Ceramics studio, I will have a youtube video walking you through as well.  Click below to see the rest of the photos.

Form

I am loving the pushed in pots, people are talking vaginal, rose-bud, toilet seat, shells, seed pods, but I just love them for what they are, beautiful forms that allow my sculpted elements to have a platform for expression.  The first couple of photos here I particularly like, I have realized that although some potters feel the need to get taller and taller and taller, the squaint squat pushed in pots that really bulge out are my favorites. 

Desktop Background

Can you guess where the inspiration of this pot came from?

Low Fire White Clay

I finally got around to creating with my lowfire white clay!
Love it, love it.  Especially love the transformation that occurs during firing when these will come out starch white (I actually prefer them gray like this... alas), BUT they will loose all of that amazing detailing so I will likely color them with washes and engobes to flow into the cracks and create a bold look... I really want to wash over with black on one, and actually make a colorful one as well (gasp!) so Stay tuned, lots of work will be put out over the next few weeks.

I REALLY really like this one for several reasons, its so good, I was excited when I finished working.  The shape is nice and stout and rotund, the figure is bare, and there is a smaller figure, whenever there is a smaller figure it represents SAFETY, she is safe under the watch, the nuturing guardianship of the central figure. Safe universe - in a safe universe you can relax, there is no need to worry.