Wheel Thrown Ware - Student Work

Last years Cermics II kids really got into throwing on the potter's wheel, especially Eddie Ponce.  These two lovely vases above along with the sweet teapot below were his work.

Rita Labib really got into the glazing of her thrown and altered pieces, doing a lot of cool experimentation.

And Stella Park really enjoyed our bowl unit, and then the glazing of them.

I miss you guys, hope all is well, and that you are happy.  Looks like we have another strong crop of second year clay kids this year, so stop by and see what they are up to.

Woven Bird's Nests - Student Work

This really lovely first one is the work of junior Laarnie Barcelon.  I love how much effort she put into all the added embellishments like the hanging ribbon with buttons. And her starch balloon eggs are wonderful too!

This is the 2nd year I've done this assignment with my Beginning 3-d kids as a vehicle to teach them dimensional weaving.  I couldn't be more pleased with the results.  within these nests you will find their hand spun yarns, feathers, laces, ripped fabric, recycled plastic bags, string, jute, you name it, it's been used to weave with.

The kids build their wire foundations from the rebar I pick up at Home Depot for just a couple of bucks.  It's steel but bendable, and really works well to form their structures with.  

The love birds and their nest were made by senior Kasie Le-Nguyen.

And the owl family and nest were done by the sweetest junior ever, Beah Tolentino.  There are actually 3 owls in the nest by only two are peeking out in this photo.

I feel really bad, I've lost the student's names of these next couple of nests, but they sure are cute!

I'm pretty sure this one above was made by junior Kaya Quarles.  

love the visual flow going on between the woven weft choices and the speckled eggs she made.  the students were required to make something special to put inside their nests.

This next one above is the creation of sophomore Reis Misaka.  Love those beautiful origami birds he made for his nest.

And this last fun one belongs to 8th grader Jenna De La Paz.

Great job young ones!!!!

Eco-Dyeing Gone Wild! My Work

My new 3-d class is getting their first taste of eco-bundling.  I might have been a bit heavy handed with my flowers on this one  LOL, but I'm having so much fun!!!

Into the cabbage it goes, where it ends up, nobody knows!

Lump Boxes - Student Work

These sweet Lump Boxes were done last school year by my Ceramics I kids and they really enjoyed the assignment.  I tried real hard to get them to form their piece asymmetrically which is always more interesting to the eye.  Then of course I make them add surface design for even more interest.  Each has a locking lid that fits perfectly or almost  LOL

These top 3 were done by seniors David Awada, Sophia Lu and Binny Singh.

These next 3 were the work of junior Justyn Li and seniors Mehar Maju and David Lee.  I just love Mehar's surface design.  One of my favorite motifs to use are sun designs.  She used applied decoration and incising to build hers with.

Senior Andre' Martin did this lovely one below.  Notice that he wedged our grey and red clay for a marbleized look with transparent glaze to show it off. 

This little bitty one was made by senior Lilith Huang.  She incised her design then stained it with cobalt oxide and transparent glaze.   Looks like she also marbled the clay.

This handsome piece below was built by senior Kevin Luong.  Look at his perfect glaze application, not easy for the beginners.

Next are these two by junior Aditi Ramesh and senior Nikki Shah, both amazing designers and craftswomen.

And lastly I took two photos of this cutie so you could see how the lovely junior Shamara Mustafa wrapped the coil around her piece for visual flow.  This way the eye travels around the whole work.  Shamara stained her piece with red iron oxide then applied transparent glaze over top.  So pleasing to the eye!

Newest Sampler Pillow - My Work

I'm so happy with my latest pillow sampler that I finally put together this summer.  I dyed the yarn years ago in a demonstration with food colors for my Intermediate 3-D students, then taught them to knit these 9 different samples.  But I disliked the harsh colors so I just never bothered to finish up the piece.  But this summer I was determined to get pieces finished and now I really love how it looks all together.

What really pulled it all together in my opinion is the yarn I bought to crochet around the edge with the felted flowers.   It was expensive, something like $40 for one skein, but so worth it from Pagewood Farms I believe.

7th Grade Oil Pastel

My 4th Quarter group from last school year got really creative with their oil pastel spheres.Michelle Hwang asked if she could turn her sphere into a cube, you betcha!!

I'm so sad to say that I don't have a name for either of these next two works, but I still had to show them because of their creative designs.

And this last one I'm pretty sure is the work of Dea Kunika.  Even though the design is more traditional, the craftsmanship is outstanding!!

Zentangles for My New 7th Graders

Thought you young ones would like to see what an artist designed for an Ikea pillow top.

This is so what I want you all to do with line, repetition, and shapes.

But mostly I want you to have fun with it!

3/4 Watercolor & Ink Pen

Senior Halah Elsahhar was so enamored of senior Belinda Wu's watercolor technique (below) that she asked Belinda for her secrets.  And this lovely 3/4  view is what Halah ended up with (above).

Lovely and Uplifting, thank you for sharing with me Halah.  

And Happy Birthday!!!!!

More Slab Boxes - Student Work

I knew there were more boxes somewhere in my files.  And both of these are masterful so I'm so glad I was able to show them/.  Again, this was the first year I had the kids do collage inlay right over the glazes, and it really worked out well.

Above we have junior Justyn Li.  Notice her carved surface design and the lovely way she glazed with our blue-green glaze and red iron oxide accents.  

This last one by senior Lilith Huang was such a cool but difficult architectural undertaking.  Lilith always goes all out in all her work, she never picks the easy path.  You can she her tissue paper inlay on the sides and top,  and her cute fish stamping as well.  Surface design is stressed in all my classes but especially in clay.  There is nothing more boring then a blank canvas, and I consider clay my canvas.  Check out her locking lid and how she pulled it off.  

Brilliant!!

Fractured Frontal - Belinda Wu

Just found this piece that was supposed to be posted when I did Pastel Frontal a couple weeks ago.  In that post I had mentioned that we were under a time crunch so that most of the kids choose to do a straight up frontal, but for extra credit and a whole lot of extra effort, they could fracture it up for more points.  So Belinda, being the remarkable artist that she is, took advantage of the extra credit option.  What is also cool about this piece is that they could work from whatever frontal resource they wanted, but Belinda choose to work from herself.  So she ended up with 2 self-portraits this year.  

Great Piece!

Self-Portraits - Student Work

I love this assignment in my Intermediate 2-D art class, the kids are frightened of it, but end up conquering their fears and producing wonderful pieces as you will see.  The requirements were to use their favorite 2-D medium/media and creative a self-portrait.  Two weeks ago I posted their charcoal warm-up assignment so you were able to see how they looked into the glass doors and drew themselves for an hour.  For many of them it was their first time to actually take a really hard, objective look at themselves. 

 So these are the final products.  Hope you enjoy them.

Above and below we have beautiful senior Halah Elsahhar, proud as a peacock, showing off her finished self-portrait.  Ahe chose charcoal and pastel to work in.  What a fantastic job she did.

Senior Michaela Platt decided to work in watercolor in this remarkable piece.  She really bit off a lot here and came thru like a champ.  Super expressive, great technique and design.  Love it kiddo!

Just look at the range of value she was able to achieve in her tiny figure.  Wow!

In our next one, senior Belinda Wu decided to work extremely large.  I think her canvas was at least 24" by 36".  She completely nailed her face and worked out the entire piece in acrylic.  Very impressive! 

Junior Megan Yeu didn't quite finish hers, but it was still so lovely, I wanted to put it up.  One of Megan's signature styles is to cut out parts of her paper for a filigree sort of look.  She chose to do her piece in watercolor as well.

And lastly we have senior Kevin Tang, one of my all time favorite students ever.  Personality plus.  He is heading up to UCSB this next week to start his college experience.  I will miss his terrific, positive energy in my classes.  Because Kevin took to knitting like a duck to water, and carries his knitting from class to class, he chose to portray himself with an actual knit piece he made especially for this.  Pretty darn cool, huh?  He also made the knitting needles himself out of tooth picks.  Clever, clever boy  :)  Kevin worked in watercolor and graphite.