New Work, "Ingenuity", 2015

My time is usually spent working on sculptural pieces, but for last four months it seems all I have been working on most of the time is wheel thrown work.  I finally took time away from the wheel to get back to my first love…sculpture!

This piece, "Ingenuity", is a sculpture that I had been working on for a short time.  It took me seventeen hours to create this piece, minus the multiple firings I put it through and the build up of multiple glazes. The piece is hand built with press mold additions, and is made from earthenware clay.  It is hollow and was built "life size".

With my exploration into the "object/artifact", I came upon an old 1921 gasoline welder, that my dad had found up in his attic above the garage.  I instantly fell in love with the piece and found it to be perfect to try and create with clay.  I used slabs, coil, and the pinch pot method to create this piece.

The piece was fired to cone 05 bisque and then I used glazes that I created in graduate school, at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania.  I hadn't had an opportunity to use the glazes, beyond test tiles, and was happy to finally find a piece that I thought the glazes would compliment.

The glazes are low fire as well, cone 06, and really help to make the piece look like the real thing, only with more rust and decay.

Pictured below are pictures of the piece in different stages of the making process.  Enjoy.