EASING INTO IT

COIL TRIVETS

CERAMICS I

clay, glazes, oxides, glass shards & alphabet macaroni

This assignment is a prelude to working with slabs and coils.

But instead of doing it 3 dimensionally right off the bat, 

we combine the techniques and do it 2 dimensionally first.

These originally were made to be placed under hot cooking pots on the kitchen table,

but they turn out too beautifully,

 so here at Whitney we display them as wall art.

We start with this playful piece by senior Marjorie Balaoro.

Besides making a delightful piece,

I like how she spent a lot of time painting on her glazes to make it colorful.

This is an inlay technique where they roll out a slab of clay,

and cut out everything except an outside frame.

Then they inlay coils and slab pieces in various designs to fill up the frame.

After all the negative spaces are filled ,

the entire piece is scored and smoothed from the backside,

then flipped to the front.

Areas are chosen from the small slab pieces to carve away 

so that glass shards can be melted into those spaces after bisque firing.

And this year we added a new element,

text using alphabet macaroni.

The only problem was I went to several grocery stores and couldn't find the macaroni.

Finally found a huge selection at great prices on Amazon.com

And it burned/denigrated out really well as you can see,

leaving great shaped letters with no stamping marks around them like we usually get.

The one above was made by junior Ylia Madayag.

Check out her impeccable craftsmanship, 

just like her older sis Kline,

who graduated last year.

Innate art talent runs in their blood.

Here we have this fun hot air balloon by senior Lauren Kennedy.

She critically thought out her glazing.

She used both Red Iron & Cobalt Oxides to stain entire piece with,

then dipped in out transparent Blue-Green glaze.

And the final touch,

 melting her glass shards in a blue color to work with the staining of the Cobalt.

Well done Lauren.  

And our last one was done by junior Vincent Nguyen .

I love how he used various colors of glass shards

 so that the color gradually moves from greens to blues across entire piece.

And the contrast with the white glaze makes this a bold piece.

Bravo young man!