School Art project Glass melting on claywork sea forms

Last term at school students were asked to look at the sea, from sea forms, creatures, sand to debris washed up on the beaches. 
It is part of a large project which encompasses nearly two terms so they really have the opportunity to explore their ideas and use different medium. So far they have used printing inks (mono printing) and collage and drawings to represent these ideas, but I am going to show you the clay work part as this is what I have been more involved in.

Firstly they made their forms from buff clay, mostly organic shapes with shells, stones, wood act.. impressed into the clay. Some students preferred to use relief shapes and made tiny sculptures others put holes in there work as later on they will be stitched onto hessian and canvas and used as part of a final piece of work. (more on that later when they are done.)
But for now here are the photos showing how the process has gone so far.
Here are some straight after they have been made.

and after a bisque firing

Oxides and glazes were applied after the bisque firing, just small quantities though, hence the small cups

Students then chose glass beads to place on their work to melt in the kiln.
We used beads as its safer to use, but you can melt broken glass shards if you are brave enough and have protective gloves.

Setting up the work in the school.

All set to fire this week!!!
Fingers crossed it will be ok and we get some good results. I worry far more with a glaze firing especially when its all students work.

Here is an example of my melted glass bowls I did earlier this year. I gave these as an example of how their work may appear after melting glass.

School Tile Update

Gardening Club ceramics tiles
A few blog posts ago I mentioned a project that I did with the schools gardening club, you can review it here.

Well, after storing them in my garage over the summer I finally got them into the kiln a couple of weeks ago, and this is the final glaze firing for the tiles. They have glazed really well and I'm so glad I took the decision to only let them glaze the letters just one colour (much to the children's annoyance at the time) I didn't want to control how they used the colours but just felt that the letters would be lost in a mix of glaze colours if I hadn't.

The children collected leaves, twigs and other garden objects and imprinted them into the tiles.

The tiles need to be mounted onto a wooden sign now ready to be placed in the school garden. I will post more pictures when this is done.

Aboriginal Art Masks ~ School ~

Approximately 200 Aboriginal Art masks made by year 8's dried and fired. The masks were taken from drawings in sketchbooks and designed by the year eights and here are their creations. Symbols and textures have been used based on the Art of the Aboriginal People.

On the drying shelves

Some of the masks as they dry out on the drying shelves.

The clay rollers and stamps that I made for the school children to use in this project.

Some of the finished clay masks after the firing (1000c)