9 week Craic!

so for the next 9 weeks we are going to be in 3 different workshops. this week id the start of this and for these 3 weeks in going to be in the slip casting and moulding workshop. so far i have started on a mould of my little dog from my first project so im going to take it out of the hot press and see how it turned out. in the mean time im working on the lathe making a mould for a cup out of plaster.

marcus o mahony

today we got to meet a well known ceramicist marcus o mahony. the day wasn't too bad. it went relativly fast. for the morning he gave us a talk about himself and an introduction to his work:) after break we went down to the main studio and he gave us a demonstration on how he works, it was interesting, and gave me an insite into work myself, like the salt glazing technique he was talking about and also the whole set up of the woodfiring kiln..... now tomorrow its back into work. i've to set up clay recycling and start pugging it all out..FUN FUN!!!!!

new project

well better late then never but ya sooooo we got a new project there 2 weeks ago :/ ha. this project is similar to the last one except we got to look at our object. we got given an object at random so i was given a scrubbing brush. it was okay , tricky for the bristles but okay in general!! today then we had our assessments so fingers crossed on the results!!!!

new project brief

so we got through the first assessment so far, so now we've being given a new 2 week brief.. this brief is on the similar subject matter as the last one, except that we've being given an object at random and we have to use that to work with. i was given a dishes scrubbing brush, yes very exciting :/ anywho il get over that :P

SECOND YEAR :D

so im a bit delayed with the blog after the summer but hows ever :P.... have my first assessment today on our first brief.. the brief was to do with having to pick an animal at random, draw many sketches out of our heads without any research into our sketch books... so to strat off with mine i drew many different types of animals- from a hedgehog to a ostrich and then after it all finally a dog.. i characterised my dog so that he would be in running motion. once i had made all my draws of him, i then moved onto the paper making where i made little paper maquettes of these.. i spent a few days on the paper  and then in my final days of the project i went onto the  clay modelling of this animal.. at fist this was dificult as i wasn't able to master the ability to have him standing up.. eventually i got the hang of it, i let the clay harden over night then stood him upright , his legs then had a bit of balance and i also used a small wooden stick from the canteen, normally in use for the oul tea stirring. ha. so today we've the assessments on this project so hopefully all goes well!!!

My pieces FINITO . . . .

 

So i then with my cone, full of foam , brought the lot back up to the ceramics studio where i got a hot glue gun and stuck serveral of my indivual glazed pieces onto the cone...

so these pieces are my finished work. i greatly enjoyed doing these pieces and this narrative project and also in getting to explore my native home place a bit more.. :D

filling my ice cream cone ....... SPLAT!

so once all my pieces were glazed and fired and were taken out of the kiln i then moved onto my CONE :) so i went down beside the ceramics department with elaine and there we started, and we took out the expandable installation foam and started filling my ceramic ice cream cone piece.. this took a few hours for it to dry and expand(which it did, about 10x its size :/) but it was fun :D

 firstly i tried out some smaller cones as a little experiment....

my other 3D sculptural pieces!!!

i started to experiment a bit with other materials and tried out pieces in wire, paper, mudrock etc.. so i built little pieces like, a cone, some shells, pieces of rope and seaweed...

ice cream escape!!!

once i had all my pieces ready after them coming out from the kiln i then decided to go and work on the cone again so i got a can of expanding foam and took myself off down to the raku area outside...there elaine assissted me with the foam into the cone , first an experimentation was carried out to see what way it was going to react, how much it expanded , etc. them we fill up the cone in the foam and gathered some of the fishing wire and stuffed it into the cone... i then came back after lunch and checked on it and it had expanded so much and over flowed onto the table, like an ice cream cone melting!!!!

my pieces after there transperant glaze firing

today i took my pieces out from the kiln after the glaze firing, they turned out...ok!!!

at the moment..

now.. at the moment im getting my last few firings done.. i took my head and my cone out of the kiln today so they're now ready and my beach material pieces have gone into the kiln to have the glaze on them to be fired.. on thursday i glazed these pieces by dipping them one by one into a white liquid glaze and then placed them on the shelf to be fired.....

Tasty inspirations ;)

there at the weekend my friend and i decided to go into town for a walk around and we ended up going to the shop getting jellies... once we came out from the shop we then decided to head down to the beach and sit down and take in the fresh air and have an aul chat, whilst eating our jellies... i then came a cross a lovely piece of TASTY INSPIRATION , this was a sweet made like an ice cream cone :) here i found it a good useful piece of research for my project.. it ties in well with my team of "the beach" and also having ice cream at the beach!!!

then when i was sitting there i started to take a few pics of the actually beach haha

lovely sunny day by the sea

my other bits and bobs :)

these pieces are just out from being bisque fired and i then glazed them... these represent small little ice cream cones... but my wafer broke at the bottom of it.. not going so good but i will try and do something about that once it is finished:)

these little pieces are whats going to be going into my ice-cream cone....

inside my cone

little bits that i made to put into my ice cream cone...

sickened

when my cone came out of the kiln it had cracked :( so hopefully now it will be ok

my heads process

starting off

Beach at my table.....

this week i started off making my cone!!! firstly i started with coil building a huge cone shaped object(which i think will b too big for the kiln :/) haha. then , i picked out a few of my materials that i collectedat the weekend and started to make them. ive started with making some sea-shells and then i will build up a collection of them gradually :)

SO! got my head around thing on what im going to do for my narrative...... ICE-CREAM CONE!!! :D setting my narrative around my home area, and as i live beside the sea im goign to base my narrative on the beach.As many people like to visit kilkee during the summer, lots of ice-cream goes around, especially when people like to relax on the beach they go for some thing refreshing like ice-cream :) often when children get some ice cream they tend to let it fall in the sand and lots of materials get stuck into their lovely treat. so where im going with this is that il make a ice cream cone , but , instead of icecream in it there is going to be lots of beach materials like sand, crabs, seagull feathers, bits of plastic inside the cone!!!! lets hope this goes well :)