Ceramics / Sculpture / Other

---

A thousand years ago, I took this ceramics class and not very much turned out that great. My wife affectionately calls my one piece "The Creepy Stomach." I would have to agree. 

I did make ONE thing in the middle of making something else, though, that I am pleased with. I intended it to be a small treasure box - I remember thinking I wanted to make a small practical/useful  gift, for my then pregnant wife, for Christmas that year. I saw the "box" in my head and made it in-between what I was supposed to be doing. When I say that, I literally mean It appeared in my mind's eye. 

My professor soon came over to discuss what the hell I was doing in the middle of what I was supposed to be doing. But, after an hour or so of letting me be side-tracked he said he'd let it get loaded into the kiln with the rest of what was to be fired that night, based on my decent clay sculpture. It's was the kind of thing I wanted to be making at the time, but couldn't - constrained by the parameters of making intro. ceramics projects. For me, it has an Oriental feel. The glaze fired wrong and came out much more gray than I wanted (was going for golden tan), but I still think it's the only ceramic piece that turned out acceptable, other than the stomach-bong of course! That jewelry box holds my son's first few haircuts folded in paper envelopes now. Weird what things end up being used for.  

I tend to hoard things. Thusly, I found myself with around 50 one-gallon cans of latex paint of varying pigments. Most were found when I collected them after someone tossed all their paint to the curb - see my recycling/scrapping/trash treasure page. Wanting to use the paint in some creative capacity, I began thinking about pouring multiple layers of paint into a solid forms. I poured a new thin layer daily, into a box mould to contain the layers, letting each one dry somewhat before adding each additional layer. This was back in 2014, when I started this project.

Recently, I took the old "blocks" of poured paint, that I never did anything with, and carved into them with various wood carving tools. The results have been a fun experiment but I've yet to solidify a goal for these eventual paint carvings/paint sculptures. They remind of topological maps or the soil and rock strata observed on hillsides and mountains. Like the canvas spirals I've done, I feel they push/blend the boundaries of painting and sculpture. I'll finish one...some day.