Thursday 9 May 2013

What Was I Thinking?

This bowl has been sitting as a looming presence in my studio for a l.o.n.g....time.
 
I made it in a great fervour of activity nearly 3 years ago, while on holidays 100km away. It is made of paper porcelain in which I had placed all my hopes because of its amazing structural properties. It is about 300mm wide and 190mm high but only .5mm thick. Now amazingly this has travelled the hundred km back to Melbourne in a seatbelt on the backseat without having been fired at all. While I was making it it had some little disasters and stuck to the board I was making it on. The bottom fell out and so it had a new base put on many weeks after I had started it. It has been treated very roughly and so even though I couldn't face the thought of smashing it up and recycling the clay again I couldn't bring myself to bisque it either. It has just been a niggling worry that I have wasted precious energy on and so last week I bit the bullet and bisqued it in the gas kiln.
I don't believe it! It hasn't got a smidgeon of cracking and is as light as can be with a lovely ring to it when you ping it with your finger.
But, I have completely lost my vision of what it was going to look like on completion and don't know where to go now. I think I was going to cover it with detailed drawings but I am not sure if I trust the structure enough to invest that much time and emotional energy into it. What to do what to do??

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