j's 4th class (disaster and performance art)

well, my fourth class was great.

I showed up maybe 30 minutes late cause I was having trouble getting out of bed AND there was a long line at starbucks. Once I showed up, Zach smiled at me and laughed, saying he JUST finished the glazing demo, and he had just said, "ok, so now someone is going to show up!" and sure enough, cue my entrance.

He asked if I had anything ready to glaze, I told him as a matter of fact I did: 2 bowls, a wonky mug, 4 test tiles, and a tray. He took me on a private tour of the glaze room showing me stuff and answering my specific questions which was nice (I've never worked with washes before, so I though it'd be fun to try out a couple). Then I got my stuff out and started working on glazing, and he just hung out, talking with me about how I could totally mix glazes for this class if I was interested. He seemed particularly interested in the fact that I'd taken 1 low fire class. I guess that's his favored medium, but has been forced to work mostly with high fire since coming to PCC.

After a bit, Zach called me out of the glaze room to give a demo on throwing pitchers, spouts, and plates. It was a FASCINATING demo. I got the urge to throw things on a wheel again from watching him (not that I had stopped wanting to do that, but watching him throw inspires me).

After spending some more time in the glaze room (mostly on my test tiles), I decided to throw on the wheel some. I made 2 larger balls, and was attempting perhaps something larger, but I wasn't working with the tips that Zach taught me last week, and ball #1 was a complete disaster. The form melted infront of my eyes cause I had used too much water or something. Totally sad. Zach claims that "throwing off the hump" is the easiest way to work, so I thought I'd try that with ball #2. Especially since I'd been making my bottoms too thin. I threw a pretty respectable cylinder actually that looks like it'll make a good mug. I'm excited for it. Zach even walked by and commented that it was a great looking cup. Go me!

I went back into the glaze room after this to finish up on the items I'd left out to dry out after cleaning up the wheel. Zach pulled me out of the glaze room again saying I should see this "performance art" piece they had on the projector right then. It turns out the artist of this piece was in the ceramics lab right then working on a large amorphous clay shape that she was meticulously adding clay warts to (took 2 people to lift... roughly the size of a fire hydrant), and had brought this DVD with her. It was... an odd thing.... this performance art piece.

It was a dinner served in 4 or 5 courses featuring pottery as the serving mechanisms. It was kinda bazaar. The room in which this dinner was taking place was all white, and the "dinner guests" were in white paper coverall jumpsuit things with goggles and hair nets. The course being shown when I came in the room was perhaps the appetizer? The table was set up with maybe 50 or so bowls of dipping sauces or thicker hummus-like dips. In the center was a cluster of gourd-like shapes, each with a long (2 foot?) stem sticking out. Each dinner guest had a ceramic oversized pacifier shaped ring that they were using to eat the various dips with. Turns out the stems of the gourds were straws, and the guests were also sipping whatever the contents of that were. It seemed strange, and the dinner guests seemed to be enjoying the experience, even if you could tell they thought it was a little silly at times.

The next course consisted of these inverted tear-shaped pottery pods being suspended by wire from the ceiling over a bed of live wheat grass. There was honey dripping down the wire to the pods, and onto the wheat grass. The dinner guests were licking the pods and eating the grass without using their hands. It seemed like a new party game more than anything else.

The next course was a polenta and broth course. The broth was being served in a pottery container that was maybe 2-3 feet long, and segmented and meandering, like a large grub. It had holes cut out of it's side, and in those holes were baby bottle nipples. The dinner guests were enjoying the broth via suckling this container. Very odd. The polenta was in a molded shape identical to the pottery vessel, and the dinner guests were using cup-like spoons to eat the polenta.

The final course, the dessert course was actually kind of cool. It involved a pottery feeding tube, and dessert pods. The tube was a large 8-10 inch in diameter tube, maybe 1.5 feet long standing on end. It had a number of holes cut out of the side, and a ceramic plunger in the top. The tube was full of chocolate pudding, and when the plunger was pushed down, pudding would be forced out of the cut out holes. The dessert pods were literally these little fist-sized pods with a tiny opening (and pottery cap). They contained a creme broule concoction. The dinner guests had a tiny ceramic spoon they could use to get the contents of the pod out, altho it didn't look like the form (albeit asthetically pleasing) had the most functional design. It was kinda fun watching them squish more pudding out of the feeding tube. That was the end of the DVD.

I finished up what I was working on in the glaze room, and set my items on the cone 10 reduction firing cart. I'm saving the tray to glaze later. I'm not sure how I want to do it yet, and want to see the results of the test tiles before I commit to anything.

Finally, I pulled out all the forms I had thrown last class. I was able to cut the last several off the bats. I put the pieces I wanted to treat seriously on one ware board, and the ones I could use for handle practice on another. I then attempted to trim my 3-point symmetry collapsed bowl.... and trimmed through the bottom. DANGIT! I really liked that piece. Oh well, I sadly submerged it into the clay reclamation sink. I was pretty much out of time by then (pushing 3:30pm), altho I wanted to get further with a number of my pieces, I was forced to wrap them up in plastic and put them back on the shelves.

Maybe I'll try to make the open lab on Thursday evening and get some stuff done.