How to Turn A Wheel-Thrown Pot Into A Lighter-Than-Air Sculpture | JENNIFER McCURDY

well hello my name is Jennifer mccurdy and I'm here in San Diego at the Potters Council porcelain to workshop and just got through presenting some of my techniques so what I'll do is to take the throwing form and alter it for you such as this formats the first thing I will do is to divide the shape into however many sections I want in this case I have divided the form into six so I take this form and I start by dividing like so and then I alter the form by first just making little lines they are going to say where my folds are going to go the key to these alterations that I do is that I do not press in all at once once I have the lines all the way around then I will take my thumb using the arc of my hand to be my tool this knuckle right here is the main tool that I'm using - all through this piece just pull that once I've set up my fold lines quite well I can go in and just increase the fold this alteration is done when the clay is still plastic I have let it sit off the wheel so it's not sticky plastic see it's white plastic see how that's the pieces being folded in it's actually getting smaller which stands to reason as you accordion anything get smaller yes but now this this is once this is dry this is going to make for a much stronger form I've got all of that corrugation it's just like a tin roof it's more strong corrugated than if you had it straight in now our next step is to take the altered form and put it into the car Memphis starting on the soft side of leather hard and working towards the hard side of leather heart so the first thing I do is I lay in what I call my longitude lines and I sort of follow my Valley that you see from the valleys of the corrugation then I come back and I put my longitude lines and my top of my hills like traverse slides on the top of the hills and the bottom of the valley by using my longitude lines and from going from the valleys up to the top of the hills connecting these lines together I start developing my pattern after I have all of my lines penciled in I have my incision lines penciled in and then without it's where I'm going to cut the edge here and I also have marked where I want to do my carving so I take my WS in scruffy toe tool and I just I do not want to carve the first mark which is going to be where I'm going to cut so I go down to the second one and I just have to go over the whole round take follow all the lines still I'm going from my Valley or my Hill into my Valley after I have marked with this graffito tool all the lines that I'm going to carve out I switched to my trimming tool which I'm using to cut to carve away these lines on either one side of the line that I cut or the other so that gives me gives me a shadow and see where this is just being cut right like so and then it's going to come up into point when I carve away on the other side of the line it's rough now and what I want to do is let the piece dry before I send any of the carving marks away so the next step I do is I cut away all of my edge when I cut away the strong arch support and Herod in the throne form such as I'm doing right now I am setting up the opportunity for slumping movement in the kiln this is desirable to me it is the last chance that I'm going to get at plasticity okay and so something like this piece here I will sometimes I like to make my edge more jagged I mean let me go ahead and cut that away or driving at this stage just it's pretty soft I can actually do this so in our in our quest toward this piece or this type of piece since we've altered and carved if the next thing we do is wait until the piece gets to be bone dry and we sand the piece now we have another set of tools - we have these are our tools for sanding I have pieces of scrubbing that I cut up into little pieces so this is the scotch brite green scotch-brite I have the sponge brushes that you get at the hardware store you want the poly brush made in the u.s. not the ones made in China and the reason is that the little plastic piece on the inside that gives you that you that you push against is closer to the surface of the edge of the brush and you don't want this part to be limp you want the stiffness this is I use the 2 inch brush and the 1 inch so a lot of times just buy it but what you can do is I have taken the 1 inch and put it on a in this case I have put it on a skewer you know like barbecue skewer so that what I want to do I can get on the inside of pieces to sponge to you know get on the inside of pieces to sponge and again put on with handy paper tape I have a piece of scrubbing also with paper tape used for scrubbing and sponge for the same purpose and of course the last tool that you need for sanding is your respirator it's very important to wear this any kind that you are sanding any play so the I use first the scrubby this little scrubby piece to get any of these sharp lines out that that is the tool to use to get that that those lines out the sponge will make it nice and smooth but it won't actually get out the sharp edge so I will I would just go over the whole round of this piece just like so with this scrubby you can see the difference now between this piece that has been gone over with the scrubby and right here where it has not then I will go over to smooth any of my scrubby marks out I will go over with the brush I use a little water in this sponge but remember that as you will use this water your weakening the piece again so be aware of that you don't want to absolutely soak your piece this sponge is harder you know rougher than my elephant ear so I then I will go over the whole piece and get out any of those sponge marks nice and smooth and then the last thing will be to take a piece of paper towel or some other sort of abrasive material that's just like burnished gets out any of my sponge marks I was experimenting with how far I could push the clay and started firing the pieces balanced upside down on a stilt this piece is a little too wet let's say this one okay you balance this upside down and then these places where I cut are just going to relax and droop to the point where when it comes out of the kiln then it is this piece yeah this piece was very much spherical just as this piece was when I put it into the kiln but when it collapsed so much then it changed shape when I turned the piece back right-side up it had transformed into a completely different shape that's a fun technique I think the possibilities are endless we do try it at home you

Channel: Ceramic Arts Network

Views: 1,704,178

Rating: 4.8657937 out of 5

Keywords: Ceramic Arts Daily, Jennifer McCurdy, Wheel Throwing

Id: XFOTUio2NtE

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/MrBlaaaaah]

I don't think they understand what "Lighter-than-air" means. Ya know... it means lighter than air. Like a balloon or a dirigible.

[u/brauhze]

tl;dw: Resulting pottery is not actually lighter than air.

[u/Thebazilly]

Firing the pieces upside-down is ingenious. The finished pottery reminds me of feathers or billowing hair.

[u/ShibuBaka]

Fantastic!! A true master of the spiral!!!