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Pastimes : ceramics-clay-pottery -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AugustWest who wrote (23)	12/1/2001 9:20:56 AM
From: Crocodile	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 338

Hope you are having a relaxing saturday morning. Actually, I am. I'm just drawing a map for some book illustration work... which, to me is relaxing. I was thinking about what you said about working with clay and that you don't really see the finished piece at the beginning. I think that might have more to do with the process...possibly. With wood I find that I have to have a fairly good idea of what it is that I'm making right from the outset because there are problems that will need to be worked around... size of piece required, things like knots that have to be worked around. Of course, there are always some surprises as you work on a piece... you might cut away a section and find something unexpected in the grain. But you are always conscious of the fact that you can't reattach something to the piece...well... yes, you actually CAN, but you might not want to... But I mean that you have to have some idea of where you are going with things so that you don't cut away wood that you might later want. It seems that a lot of woodcarvers, and especially stone carvers (and I'm thinking specifically of Inuit carvers that I have read interviews with), often feel that the finished piece already exists within the piece of stone or wood. My own kind of carving..well... some of it, doesn't have that feel to it at all, but my "other" kind of carving, which is to do strange looking masks that are somewhat like False Face masks...well.. with that kind, I am definitely responding to shapes that are already residing within the wood. This winter, I'm actually hoping to work only on that kind of carving as it is the most fascinating to me. I've been collecting the odd piece of drift wood and old pieces of saw logs for projects... just rather sorry I didn't think to collect more during my various canoe trips this summer so that I had a better stock of pieces to work with over the winter...but that's okay. Anyhow, I think that clay invites a different approach. It reminds me more of working withe metal, where you can add pieces to the work in progress. In fact, that's usually how it "happens". You just stop and look at a piece and suddenly think... "Hmmm... I think it I want to put THIS on HERE. Yeah! That's more like it!!" (o: Drawing can be that way, but I find that when I'm working with pen & ink for illustrations, etc... it usually takes fairly careful planning or else there is a lot of trashed work and wasted time. I usually plan a drawing out very carefully in pencil first, then start working in ink over my initial sketch. I guess that the "inventive" part starts when I start deciding how I will create some textural or light effect. Pen and ink is very unforgiving though, so I experiment on scraps of paper before I commit to the final sheet. So, yeah... I guess I use different thought processes for my work. However, I do enjoy the feel of just "adding stuff" to a work. That's probably why I did enjoy working with clay in the past. If I start again, I think it will be to create odd things... masks...unusual sculptures to go out in the garden. Actually, the thought of that makes me pretty inspired to get doing something. Trouble is still a logistics thing. I have a friend who has a large electric kiln with a broken lid hinge. She's threatening to get it fixed so that she can start potting again after a long hiatus. If she does, I will take her up on her offer to help fill the kiln with pieces for firing... hmmm... And yes... it is nice being part of a family of artist types. We can all do "other stuff", but we think like artists in everything we do.