Cameo

A self portrait relief. Do you think it looks like me?

This Is Just To Say

-William Carlos Williams

I meant to glaze this red. Pete's Red is such a nice candy apple red. But instead of red they turned quite purple, which is one of my least favorite colors.

But oh how I love sweet purple plums. I pick them ripe from the tree in the back yard (actually the neighbors back yard) on a warm summer day. They are the loveliest shade of deep red with dusty highlights of purple and blue. They are delicious. So sweet and so juicy.

Raku

Ceramics

Brain Storming

This is what I do to help me think of what project to do next: I sit down with a ball of clay, I imagine a position my body could take, and I sketch it out of clay. When I finished one pose I put the clay back into a ball and think of another pose. I sculpt these rough figures to help me think.

High School Ceramics

High School Ceramics

These ceramic dishes are made with two kinds of clay, terra cotta and white stoneware. For the first I attatched seperate squares. For the bowl I wedged the two colors together to create the marbeled look.

High School Ceramics

This is my first mosaic. I wish the elephant stood out better. I cut every piece before firing, and hand painted each before glaze firing. My teacher had me load the glazed tiles in the kiln. I don't blame her for not wanting to load them herself. I had very few left over tiles because I mapped out my drawing and knew how many tiles fit on the board, and I was able to get a very close guess to how many tiles I needed of each color. I bought a pine board, mixed the morter, lay the tiles, put grout between the tiles, then scrubbed it all clean. Both the mosaics are at least 2 by 3 feet. A lady offered to buy it at an art show, she wanted to put it in her childrens nursery, but after all those hours I worked on it after school, money just wasn't enough.

This is a mosaic replica of Starry Night that I made with a couple of other students. The first mosaic I made took me so long that I knew there was no way I could have finished this alone by the end of the school year. This second mosaic was much easier with the extra help and with my experience. I made slab plates that were fired and glazed, each plate in a different color. Then I took them outside and dropped them on the cement and hammered them into little pieces. All the peices were randomly broken except the moon and the steeple, and the black border. My teacher kept this project so I guess maybe it is on display in my high school somewhere.

This is an african inspired lion mask. I rubbed on acrylic paint with a towel to give it a rustic look. I punched small holes in the clay all around the face so I could tie rafia onto it for a mane.