Production Mode

Last week was my first full week of production mode–woohoo!  Production mode is always my favorite part of any project–you get to just do it, machine style, without thinking anymore, whatever “it” may be.  The thought process part is over (or at least stalled for a while–I’ll probably have to think again when it comes time to actually install) and I get to just make stuff!  Freely!  I have to say it feels pretty awesome to just blast through casting, although I’m also going through the slip really fast!  I ordered a new 5 gallon bucket the previous week and it’s already 3/4 empty!  Thankfully that was the last bucket I’ll need to purchase–from now on I’ll either make slip out of the studio porcelain clay body by adding defloculant or make my own casting slip from scratch.  It’s great to have 2 buckets though, because I can cast that much faster.  I’ve managed to figure out a really nice rhythm of casting 4 molds at a time (I only have 4 mold straps and 8 molds) and then switching to cleaning up the last set of 4 while the new set dries in the mold.  It’s going great so far!  See for yourself!

beautiful porcelain casting slip

molds all lined up, waiting for slip

Yay production mode! This sort of represents 1 8hr. day of work

fresh casts in the newest molds, including the six parter!

these guys were fresh out of a bisque kiln, ready for the reduction kiln

the previous days' casts, mostly dry and ready for the bisque kiln

the hotbox is one of the best tools ever! helps dry out the molds during and after casts, as well as the casts themselves--totally speeds up the process, especially given the summer humidity

opening the bisque kiln and finding teeth mixed in with the pots

Sculpture Residency!!

Oh!  And I got a residency!!  I got the official acceptance letter today (even though I’ve known about it for a few weeks now) with the handbook and request for a deposit.  Of course it has to cost money, which is most unfortunate, but they’ve agreed to pay for half through grant aid and work study, so I figure I ought to be able to save up the rest.  It isn’t until November, so I have plenty of time to prepare for it (which is really good–if it was this summer as I’d originally hoped, I wouldn’t be ready for it!!) and it’s at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnston, VT.  I’ll be going for sculpture for a month from November 22-December 18.  It’s sort of unfortunate that it falls on Thanksgiving, but seeing as I don’t really go home for the holiday anyways (VA is pretty far to travel for only a weekend), I don’t really mind.  And winter in Vermont will just mean that there really isn’t anything else to do except concentrate on my work, and isn’t that the whole point of a residency?  So I’m pretty psyched about that.  I didn’t have to specify any plans about how I want to spend my time there, but I’ve got a few ideas…  so we’ll see where I’m actually at when November rolls around…

And since I went ahead and started a new entry, I might as well try to do some catch up work:

3 "Mini" teeth, Blue box of real wisdom teeth (donated by Casey--thanks Casey!!), and beginning of a new "giant" tooth

Finished "giant" tooth, realistically modeled after one of Casey's wisdom teeth--pictured side by side to give a sense of scale

Completed 3-part mold of Casey's wisdom tooth

First successful porcelain cast of Casey's wisdom tooth

"Mini" teeth glazed and waiting for their turn in the Cone 10 Reduction Kiln... sadly none of these survived, they all melted into a disastrous pile

Tooth on a post, waiting for Cone 10 Reduction Kiln--I promise I'll tell the story of the ruined teeth soon... the wound is still a little too raw, even after all these weeks...

I’ve also been working on some EVEN BIGGER teeth than the biggest ones pictured here.  Two have been modeled and molded, but not cast yet so… hopefully they will all work as intended.  I’m finishing up the last of them this weekend and will test cast them after I return from VA in another week and a half so stay tuned for more on those… Plus the horrific glaze kiln disaster story, and pics of the new waxed teeth that I’m loving!  I haven’t actually photographed any of them yet (hopefully they won’t all be sold before I have a chance!), so I’ll try to do a lot of that this weekend before leaving the city.  So don’t touch that dial!  I’ll be right back with more…

Glaze Tests

I got my first batch of glazed teeth out of the cone 10 reduction kiln last week and it was a complete disaster.  I’ve been too depressed by the loss to write much or even go to studio (plus I worked 6 days in a row at the bakery so that put a damper on progress as well), so I guess I’ll show some of my initial glaze tests to prepare for telling the depressing glaze kiln story.  I did these before I had any cast teeth to test glazes on, so I just used some abandoned pottery (there’s lots hanging around the studio) to try out some of the studio glazes since they are all completely unfamiliar to me.  For the most part, I stuck with glazes that were white, yellow or some variation of the two.  I threw in a couple that I was just curious about, like a blood red copper glaze and a carbon trap and made a matrix to try every combination of the 10 or 11 glazes so that I could see how they interacted when overlapped.  Basically I dipped each plate or bowl in one glaze, then painted on a layer of each of the 1o other glazes, counter-clockwise so I would be able to figure out which was which when they came out of the kiln.  Here’s some photos, highlighting some of my favorite effects from each sample.

A porcelain block with all the samples overlapping an ice blue celadon

The top right glaze has been duplicated on a tooth--it is one of the few that survived the disaster kiln--here it is on stoneware, not porcelain

This is also one of the few glazes replicated on a tooth that survived the disaster kiln--here it is on one of the porcelain shards from Post-Processualism

Hard to see what's going on, but I like a lot of it! The far right glaze was successfully duplicated but had to be chiseled out of the kiln in pieces...

Love this glaze--have yet to duplicate it...

Some blood reds... not sure yet if they're appropriate for this piece, but there's definitely lots of potential for future pieces...

Next time I’ll either show some images from the glaze disaster kiln, or finally give a slip-casting/mold-making demo…

Nightmare Teeth

Cast Porcelain Teeth

As usual, the blog is about a month behind where I actually am in studio, so let’s start catching up a bit!  I guess it’s time to finally reveal something about the big spring project that I’ve been hinting at.  It’s about teeth!  Shocking, I know.  I’m working on a large scale sculpture/installation based on nightmares about teeth.  You know, that super common one everyone seems to have where all their teeth fall out in a number of gruesome ways.  Personally, mine are always slightly different.  Sometimes it starts with one wiggly tooth that you push back and forth with your tongue, sometimes it starts with a tough piece of toast.  Sometimes they fall out with little trouble, sometimes they crumble, and sometimes they pour out in a seemingly infinite wave.  Regardless of the means, the end result is always the same:  I’ve lost all my teeth and am completely mortified and horrified.

After researching a little about the supposed psychological origins of this dream (add to all this the fact that I grind  my teeth in my sleep as well) and discovering that it is THE most commonly shared dream among… well… humans, it occured to me that a sculptural response was necessary.  For whatever reason, the idea of a dreamcatcher for teeth popped into my head and has haunted me for about a year now.  Versions of what this “dreamcatcher” might look like, how it might function, where it might live have been floating around in my head for months.  I spent some time just researching teeth on their own (and the various diseases and viruses that plague them) and since have become completely fascinated by these bizarre bones/organs. 

From the beginning, I knew it would be porcelain, given the fact that the most accurate dentures are made of porcelain, as well as its permanence.  This idea of teeth as permanent (and yet we have to work so hard to keep them!) stuck in my head and what better means to signal this idea than the permanence of porcelain.  I also wanted them to be slipcast and therefore hollow.  This would make them incredibly fragile (and maybe even some in the sculpture would be broken open, revealing their instability as functional objects?), signaling our ideas about the perfection of teeth and what lenths we’ll go to in order to keep them perfect.  The rest I’m sort of making up as I go.  There have been thoughts about velvet gums, leather cord, and a big luxurious bed with a hand-sewn duvet cover… those are still up in the air.  In the meantime, I’ve begun working on the teeth themselves by creating some “miniature” versions for testing glazes, firing techniques and hanging/display techniques.  I call them “miniature” because they are smaller scale than what the final pieces will be (close to the size of your head?), but they are much larger than life size–about the size of the palm of my hand.

I made some teeth models just from my imagination and began the mold-making process--about to pour the 3rd part of a 4-part mold

A finished 4-part mold, that produces 2 teeth

Prepping the slip--probably one of my all-time favorite parts of the slip-casting process

Opening the mold after its first cast

A pair of finished cast teeth, ready for the kiln

Part I:  Test Teeth Mold-Making!

Next time, Part II:  Casting, casting, casting!

Since I don’t have a title for this project yet, let’s just call it… Dreamcatcher for now…

Boring Budget

OK, so before I can move on to the next project, I have to finally post the budget from Post-Processualism.  In some ways this is for my own records, just to know how much these projects are costing me, but maybe someone out there finds this information helpful or informative in some way.  At the very least, it gives you a rough idea of what projects like this can cost just in terms of tools and materials.  The budget does come with something of a disclaimer since tools are more like an “investment” since you can continue to use them in the future, and I still have left-overs of some of the other materials.  I’m also not including the cost of enrollment at the Harvard Ceramics studio since the few hours a week that I work there covers the fee, but it’s important to keep in mind because it is a hefty cost of $795 just to get access to the clay and firing.  And since talking about the budget isn’t a visually interesting entry, I’m going to post some inspirational images that lead to the next big project afterwards.

Staples (file boxes, file folders, foam sheets and bubblewrap):  $96.53

Home Depot (house paint, hanging materials, tile adhesive & grout, acetone, smoothing spatula, etc.):     $64.82

Sew-fisicated (fabric for slab rolling):     $19.95

Various Thrift and Second Hand Stores (for used frames):     $26.19

Grand Approximate Total:    $207.49 (or $1002.49 if you include the studio enrollment)

So there!  I’m finally officially done with Post-Processualism!  I’m not even going to attempt a guess on hours spent (too many!) or amount of porcelain used or anything crazy like that.  We’ll just leave it as is…  Now for the fun stuff…

Interesting illustration of 16 teeth from the left side of the mouth

Dental models of the inner structure of teeth

A glass tooth with an embedded audio chip to demonstrate integrating technologies into the body (see note at end of images)

Glowing tooth stool!! I want one!!

Teeth candy! How ironic is that?!

one of Angie Mason's rotten tooth gang (see link at end of images)

Crystal Morey's porcelain and lustre teeth (see link at end of images)

Couldn't resist posting this one just because it's hilarious!

So there!  Think about that!  And if you have any interesting teeth-related imagery, send it my way!  Or even better, if you have any teeth lying around (wisdom teeth, baby teeth, etc.) I would LOVE to reference real teeth so please let me know!  I’ll pay your shipping if you have to mail them to me, and if you’re not willing to part with them (keeping them for sentimental reasons?) take a couple photos of them from different angles and send those along instead.  And to give props to some of the posted images, here’s a link to the Royal College of Art, who is responsible for the glass audio chip tooth, a link to Angie Mason’s “Rotten Tooth Gang” website, and a link to Crystal Morey’s website where you can see lots of her other ceramic, figurative work.