Sunday, February 23, 2014

Bright and Shiny

All polished up.  I'm loving some of the new textures.  It took me a long time to create them. A number of times I put them down and walked away.  Glad I stuck with it.

I love this one.  Based on a African Barkcloth (see below).
African Barkcloth
Front side of a lentil.

Backside of the same lentil.  I realized that I like designs that are embedded in the clay...like the front side....rather than raised.  The embedded designs work better with patina or even things like gilder's paste.  
This was a dual texture.  The top has an embedded design and the bottom a raised design. 

Saturday, February 22, 2014

More from the kiln

I had a chance to finish a few things this week.  They came out of the kiln last night.  Still getting amazing colors.  What appears to be tan in the picture is actually green.  I couldn't get my camera to capture that color.


And though I didn't get out to Bead Paradise I did manage to take advantage of their on-line sale (25%off!!).  The sales goes through today.  I bought a strand of quartz, a strand of Tuareg silver and a ring.  


Saturday, February 15, 2014

My new textures...

I finally have some pics of my new texture sheets at work.  I have fired a few loads of work and still have a few more.  Funny how the first few loads have reds in them and then the next few loads shifted to a bluish green.  I'll never understand why the colors shift.



The textures came out really nice. Creating a second batch of copper textures sheets with a deeper etch was the right thing to do. Although I went through a lot of copper and totally exhausted a gallon of ferric chloride, this deepth is just perfect for me.  Sometimes with a shallower depth the design gets lost on the piece when you look at it from a distance.



Unfortunately that big beautiful lentil bead blew out at the seams on the top and bottom.  I am not very good at getting a knife edge on lentil beads.  I usually square off the edge.  The edge on this bead came out really sharp but I was concerned with how little contact there was between the two sides.  I should have listened to that inner voice.  The bead is beautiful but blown out.

The other lentil bead in the picture...squared off the edge...came out perfect.  I think from now on, squared edge is how I will make these.


Below is a look at the texture after tumbling.  I always feel so bad tumbling these since it removes 99% of the color.






Next step is to put a black patina on these so the recessed areas really pop.


Sunday, February 2, 2014

Saturday Afternoon at the CMA

The Cleveland Museum of Art is always a good idea.  Lou and I went this morning to see the "Fragments of the Invisible" exhibit.  It's a collection of sculptures from the Congo collected by Rene and Odette Delenne. The CMA acquired 34 scupltures in 2010.

We must have been some of the first people to arrive today because we had the entire exhibit to ourselves.  Unfortunately they didn't allow photography but there were a few pics form the CMA website I grabbed.

Female Figure

Songye Male Figure
The Songye sculpture is an amazing power figure.  The face is covered in copper and there are iron pieces embedded in the head as well as a redbuck antelope horn. The abdomen is embedded with various substances that were considered to have magical powers.

Exhibition Catalog
The exhibition catalog was a finalist for Tribal Arts Magazine's book of the year.  On the cover, you can see a close-up of the Songye sculpture.  One eye is made of copper and the other of iron.  There are two human molars embeded in the head...which gives me the creeps...but adds to the mystique of this piece.