Fusing Sculpture and Function - Getting Muddy With Jess

Fusing Sculpture and Function - Getting Muddy With Jess - December 3, 2018

December 03, 2018

It's Monday, so I'm not actually getting muddy today, so this is going to have to be a decent substitute. Writing about mud is the second best thing to actually being in it, I figure.

I like to make functional pottery more than anything. Stuff that's both pretty and useful, you know. That's my kink, so spending time on artistic pieces has never been high on my to-do list. Especially now that I'm trying to be a full-time potter while also running a small business on top of that, it's hard to find time for artistic expression for the sake of art. But, I still have been trying because I know it's important for my sake.

Back in the summer, my friend and fellow potter, Jeannie Awesome, asked if I wanted a lot of slip cast molds from an estate that was looking to donate them. Of course I said yes. She showed up with a whole grip of them shortly after, and there was much rejoicing.

No, seriously a WHOLE GRIP of them.

That's after we got them all consolidated to the top shelf.

So many of them. Not all of them are winners; a lot of them are antique figurines and have been used to their limits. But, some of them are absolute gold and appeal very much to my inner weirdo who wants to distort everything. Example A: several baby doll part molds, including this beauty:

Cha-ching!

If you don't think that I was stoked to put baby arms on everything, then you don't know me at all.

Turns out, though, that it was easier said than done. I had at it with gusto, though!

Version 1, with handpainted arm tattoos and everything

I was so pleased with myself. Alas, all that work was for nothing. The porcelain and the stoneware have different drying rates, and the body was just past leather-hard, so it took a lot of convincing to get the damn arms to stay put for reals.

Curses. All of the curses.

This happened on both sides, eventually, which is why she doesn't actually have tattooed arms in her final form. It just turned out to be too much work and risk, so I just let her dry nice and slow for about a month in a covered incubation bucket.

That seemed to be the trick, and she made it through the bisque kiln round abouts a month and some change after I started working on her. She got dipped simply in clear glaze and fired quite beautifully. She's so pretty.