Next week the students take their Art Exam. This year is exciting for me as in previous years all students have painted and drawn in the exam, clay work was not even considered, however this year is different.
Alongside the drawings and paintings students will be screen printing using batik methods and working with clay during their exam! Ive been involved with all these processes in recent months so I cannot wait to see what they do next week!
Here is some of the supporting work done by one student who is looking at contemporary weaving from Artists such as Ann Richards and Laura Thomas and my work to do her research on, we have used feathers to imprint into clay and made ceramic buttons to thread in with her raffia weavings, its all shaping together well for her, she has decided to make ceramic buttons during the exam and then make the weaving and after they have been fired and glazed she will thread them onto her weaving at a later date.
Here is her supporting material.
Here are some of the ceramics I got from the kiln firing over the weekend. It was a frustrating firing as both kilns decided to play up.
I initially decided to do a smaller firing in the little kiln so that I could get a couple of big orders approaching the dispatching date out to people.
Since offering wedding favours at a 4 week turnaround I've had to step up with the firings and organising my clay making time, not a natural state for me, yet I hate to let people down.
The small kiln decided to fire itself up to 300c within an hour, leaving the majority of clay work in pieces, (devastating!!) After leaving it to cool down I cleared up and retrieved some of the work in the same condition and loaded it into my big kiln. (I was too annoyed for picture taking although in hindsight I wish I had)
Then the big kiln let me down as it reached 1000c (I needed it up to 1250c) fortunately it was the switch tripping out because one of the cables had corroded. Fortunately my man with his practical skills sorted it out for me so the kiln resumed its firing.
