When I was younger I remember creating little cottages in primary school and imagining little people or fairies living in them and so I wanted to almost relive that moment by recreated a collection based on those moments. I also gathered inspiration from artist Tomoya Sakai and how he creates ceramic pieces based on different themes created from his memory. He creates clay sculptures from his own memory, the memory of others and things that surround him in his life.
He looks at the perception through conscious and unconscious and how things can be perceived as something else through memory making them warped and abstract as they touch deeper into our memory storage.
Researching into his work and the context behind it he quotes "I create things that lie between unconsciousness and consciousness, or abstraction and concreteness. And then, through unfixed images, I awaken my deep memories and reconsider who I am." - Work | TOMOYA SAKAI (amebaownd.com)
I found his sculpture really fascinating as they aren't always distinguishable forms and the bright colours make them stand out looking like trophies or objects from another world.
Glazed houses
For some of my ceramic models I chose to glaze some of them a I chose an opaque gloss based glaze. Luckily because they were smaller scale I didn't have to make a large batch of glaze. I started with a premade base powder that you then add part water too and a small amount of colour pigment.
I picked a blue/green powder that would hopefully come out as a turquoise shade and more vibrant then the glaze mixture. When preparing the first batch I accidently made a small amount that was nowhere near enough so for my second attempt I ended up just adding it to my successful batch that I measure correctly, which I also noted down the recipe and measured amounts in case I need to refer back too if I wanted to get the exact shade and ratio.
I decided to go with my smallest house as I wanted to test dipping it into the glaze. This was done for me in a sort of demo to show the method of applying the glaze. We watered down the glaze as it was a bit thick, this made it easier for it to cover the ceramic house. The top was submerged first for a few seconds swirling around the mixture to make sure all the parts were covered, then because the ceramic is dry the glaze sticks to it air drying into a powdered layer on the model. This allows you to flip it to do the other end but making sure not to handle it too much, as this can cause the glaze to rub off especially if your hands/gloves are wet or sticky. Once the bottom half was dipped I learned that it is vital that you wipe the glaze layer off the bottom end, if this isn't done when the ceramic is fired again in the Kiln it will fuse to the hot surface, resulting in it being nearly impossible to remove without breaking it.
Overall I liked how the blue glaze came out but next time I will use more pigment for the pink one as it was supposed to my red and I will also make sure to maybe water down the glaze more when dipping as they ended up have this bubble texture on them after coming out the kiln.
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