Masters Degree in Fine Art - module 2/month 2

Last week was week 8 of my 2nd term doing a Masters Degree in Fine Art at Cambridge school of Art, so it’s time for an update.

Ceramics

This was mainly a month of me jumping feet first into the medium of clay for the first time - now that conjures up an interesting mental image! It began on the potters wheel, not the easiest place to start!

Learning to use the potters wheel

I spent over 20 hours on the wheel in my first week, with 23 attempts at throwing a pot.  Day 1: one survived out of 8; day 2: four out of 8 survived (but I killed 3 of these the following day ‘turning’ the base!), day 3 I only killed 2 of the 7 and was able to go larger, round and taller. By the end of the 2nd week I had enough pieces to play with but was aware I was beginning to get sucked into the perfectionist’s need in me to master this - when I didn’t actually need to and had to force myself to “step away from the wheel”! I felt like the pieces I’d made were more about me stopping just before they collapsed, rather than being in control of what I was doing but they will do. I had thought I’d really enjoy this, I like getting messy and learning new things but I found the process a bit stressful, feeling on the brink of disaster all the time and the intensity is rather exhausting! Saying all that, I’m really glad I’ve given it a try, feel a great sense of achievement and am pleased with what I’ve made.
Here's a little movie of me in action.

Hand building

My next job was building pieces by hand, which I’ve not done for 30 years since I was at school and all I remember was “do it properly otherwise it will blow up in the kiln and may destroy other peoples work as well as your own”! However, I found this much more relaxing and therapeutic as an activity and it suited the results that I wanted.
I decided to make 2 main pieces - the original plan being a square plaque with the body cells arranged in an orderly way to represent the amazing order and design inside of us, with the other I wanted to try something more organic looking, so created a bowl in which I could group them more randomly. I also had a handful of slightly larger pots from the wheel to experiment with later.

microvilla

white blood cells

red blood cells

tongue cells

fat cells

Glazing & firing

I knew that there was going to be a kiln firing while I was away in Madrid for the week (see previous blog post about my trip) and I used this as a helpful deadline to bring my pieces to a conclusion ready for their first bisque firing. On my return from Spain I was utterly thrilled that nothing had indeed blown up in the kiln, so I then set to work to prepare them for their earthenware firing the following week. I used an underglaze to add colour before dipping them in a transparent glaze which I used as a glue to stick them all together.

Fresh from the kiln

I worked out that up until this point I have spent over 100 hours on these pieces of ceramics. On Tuesday I got to collect them from the kiln room and the technician was really excited to show them to me - which was lovely!

They are still not completely done. I want to add some yellow to them, as I feel that’s needed - I’ve been told enamel (airfix) paint would be good for this. Then I want to experiment with adding a large ‘splat’ to some of the work to represent our uniqueness/personality/spirit - I will explore using plaster and paint for this. Katy the technician was really reluctant to sell me the bag of plaster as she doesn’t want me to mess up what I’ve done! But I have a concept to deliver!

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If you want to hear more about the module I'm working on and my inspiration or if you haven’t seen my other monthly MA updates since I started in September and would like to find out more about what I've been doing, follow this link and you can scroll back through them.

What next?

The world has turned upside down with Corona virus and this week has been escalating for us here in the UK, which of course impacts everyone and everything, my MA included. But let me save that story for next time - then I can tell you about what actually happens rather than pondering on what might be around the corner!