I still haven't been able to get pictures off my camera but...

Here's a few of my body jewelry pieces going into the kiln taken from my phone.

I lost another piece!

This time it's totally my fault, it wasn't stolen I just didn't pick it up in time from art in the garden so it got thrown out, but I just found these pictures of it! It was titled "Path to Enlightenment"

Third crit

Lauren - colored, foaming tiles

Vibrant colors, flashy brilliant and eye catching. Foam placement gives appearance of foam seeping out between the cracks and dripping down. Yellow green orange red, tiles seem fluid.

Pam - leaning classes and thin bowls

Love the thinness of the bowls, fascinating color, seems like only made out of glaze, cracks inside the brown one reveal clay surface, beautiful moment. Cups interesting leaning fluid motion.

Dani - ballet shoes

Makes me sad, beaten up shoes, dim/dark color speaks to lost pasts, the note "you had such great dreams for me..." seems longing and upset, coupled with the torn paper it's written on and tacked to the wall. Painfully bright pink lines in print at top also old fashioned.

Alex - crochet craziness

So creepy and intricate, very larval and organic, lumps seem egg or larva like, stringy attachments, dark colors, clothness seems infantile, nursery-like, creepy.

Estaban/Dani - performance

Smells nice, difficult to see artist's frustration, would have benefited from showing movement, couldn't tell what was going in and out of the shower, the projector wasn't working so didn't get the peephole effect, would have enjoyed that more I believe.

Elies - hands

I liked much better without the resin up close, although from a distance it does add to the piece a sort of eerie trappedness, especially the few fingers coming out unattached to a hand.

Liz - shapes in grass

Very little mermaid. The grass makes them fun and natural, totally different than in the crit space, much better. Reads completely under the sea for me.

Pam - table set

So beautiful, the napkins, the flowers, table cloth, penguin salt and pepper shakers!!! Color scheme is super fun, very winter. Looks complete and inviting.

Robin - carved set

Wow, much better than the previous bunch. This glaze wins, no clumping, shows detail in carving, infinitely better surface treatment, some very beautiful moments on the surface of the clay.

Ben - senior stuff

Love the pictures being in high def. Photography is very interesting, they are my favorite, love the stove and old fashioned dress set, very stay in the kitchen breakout.

Ashley - senior stuff

The hanging bugs are so creepy and cute!! The lady bugs also tickle my fancy, especially the one in the jeans. The burnt wood lyrics is truly amazing, natural yet contrived, detailed and beautiful.

Jen - senior stuff

Cohesive, natural, the jelly fish are beautiful, cloth water shapes very inviting. Ink explosion paintings very interesting, reminds me of molecular level beautiful natural phenomenon. The painting/frame that extends into branches is super cool, it demands attention and captures the eye, very dynamic.

Steph - senior stuff

The topless stabbing series I feel guilty looking at, very personal feeling. The color scheme and step by step nature and mechanical elements coming out of the third work so well, very impressive scale. The man vs machine elements of the computerish switchboard piece next to the series comes together nicely, i like that it is gender ambiguous to me.

Second crit

Jen - Lace butterfly chandelier

Beautiful, delicate, strange. Reminds me of "A Rose for Emily" the short story, sort of old fashioned and dusty looking due to color (gray) and texture, shadow is strange and haunting. Makes me think of an old woman, forgotten but not dead. Clay covered cloth instead of cloth covered clay is ironic.

Phil - Moss brass

So interesting! I just want to touch it, the color is so perfect and moss like, very alive, shape resembles fungal formation, but they seem to be made of metal, but they are ceramic! I would buy this if I saw it in a store.

Alex - knit guns

Child like, soft colors, made of yarn, opposite of hard deadly metal guns. Floating like clouds, mobiles also remind me of babies, babies represent birth, guns death. Resemble a flock flying, resemble anteaters.

Esteban - mountain + village

Very organic, at first i didn't notice all the soil on many of the edges. The varying texture and coloration and untreated wood adds to the naturalism and topographical appearance. Mud bricks at the top are unreachable so far away, untouchable.

Dani - paper and string w/ blocks on ground

If you folded them up the drips would be facing the same direction but it skips a page. Seems in between because of the ground structure. Seems like a progression. Maybe if you gutted a person you would find this inside them if they were a book.

Abby - blood cells

They are whole on the wall and move into crumbled malformed shapes on the ground. Reminds me of sickle-cell, very medical looking, text book description.

Liz - large coral-esc smaller kayoot stack

The large piece looks like coral and so doe the purple coloration, the black bubbling tar-like material makes me think of pollution and oil spills in the ocean. Smaller one seems covered in bows, red and gray coloration is interesting but i don't know what to think of it.

Robin - bowls/cups + wall hanging

Beautiful outer work on pottery, especially mountainesc scenery, glaze unfortunately seems to have been to thick and detracts from the carving, a lot of running and gathering in the center of the pieces also occurred. The wall hanging doesn't look ceramic at all, great use of leather binding to change the material appearance I assumed it was cloth from a distance.

Ben/Ashley - video

Sad, transient, temporary. The apparition in the beginning adds to the effect. Interesting dress, the head pieces are very funeral, wish the ending also involved a fadeout.

Steph - video

Creepy, burning, haunting, love the fire imposed over couch etc, and scraping motion and moment of grave being passed on the left, appearing/disappearing face is haunting.

First Crit notes

Elise - ribcage

Initially the resin around the cage reminds me of frozen things. I don't like the coloration, I find myself wishing it was blue not orange. Contrasting to initial frozen appearance it looks like a birth, it looks wet and new.

Alex - blue objects

I am in love with them. They look so soft and inviting, the light blue against the dark blue rug with similar round shapes and ovular shapes works really well. They beg to be touched an held, but not completely, you can see their hard hallow insides filled with ash. They look like TRIBBLES!

Lauren - cubes

looks like a trail, fresh and solid at the darker end, deteriorating at the end of the lighter portion. Like a snail trail. They aren't exact, they are individuals, hand touched.

Abby - roadkill-ish death piece

Gruesome, grotesque, irresistible. The color intensity and wetness of the liquid make it look fresh, as though just earlier today it was living. The vibrance also reminds me of life, contrasting the black on the inside. The separated piece reminds me of brain matter.

Phil - wood/metal

The wire being plugged into the metal center section of wood is particularly interesting, very computed. Reminds me of broken doll and android fetishes. Idea of life being sustained by machine today comes to mind. Man vs nature where nature and machine are blended rather than at odds.

Pam - pots

The fat ink and gray splattered one is pretty. Three distinct sets of pottery, blue is classic, earth tones is pre-classic, specks is modern in my eyes.

Steph - video

Frantic, frustrating (choppy time expansion). Feelings of sadness and confusion. Fascinating imagery.

Ben - projection

On left looks like a vagina. Freaky. On right looks like a penis. The organs are destructive, the person is abandoning them out into the water.

Dani - books

Scary, bloody, veiny, sewn up. Defiantly reads torture. Colorations make it seem bloodied and old, threads broken and hanging.

Robin - carved idols

Ancient and festive looking. Autumnal tones in leaves and the rich velvet fabric make me think of a fall harvest celebration. Animal choices however, puts it in Africa (hippo/elephant/lion/bird).

Ashley - wall hangings

Childrenesc, grandmotherly. Only find the cat dress visually appealing.

Esteban - thing

Interesting smoothed organic take on city structure. Love the mini transport boards the clay pieces are strapped to with caution.

production

Here are some images that give you an idea of how I like to make larger handbuilt scluptures. First I use masking tape and newspaper to form a skeleton of the entire peice, then rap slabs around it and attach them one at a time with thorough scratching and slip.

I've finished my newspaper skeleton for my first hand built sculpture and begun adding clay to it yesterday. I also have finished a few pots, and put them on the greenware shelf, I haven't checked to see if they made it into a kiln yet but one of the pots is a watering pot that my houseplants desperately need.

So far my sculpture is coming along exactly as imagined, I don't plan on putting too much detail into it until the majority of the clay has been added to the skeleton, and even then I don't plan on adding too much because it is supposed to be representative of thought and not necessarily vivid well defined thought.

I haven't written down any dreams lately and those I can remember are particularly personal; however, you could say that a few of them were closely related to my piece.

A visual memory that has stuck with me since I was probably about 13 is when my friend who was 6 months my elder came over and showed me the scrambled Play Boy channel (known at the time as channel 99). There was one clear picture of a naked woman that stuck in my head and whenever I was alone in the car with one of my parents I was so afraid that they somehow knew or could see whatever was in my head, as irrational as that is, yet I could not stop thinking of the image.

pics of my piece in progress will be presented asap.

Missing elephant

Here's him being born, him with some of his friends, and him in the rain outside my house. His name is Barnaby.

What it is

This summer I successfully transported my 200 lb ceramic white elephant from the studio to my house (50 E Cleveland), only to have it stolen off my porch on the night of September 4th. I suppose it is flattering in a way; however, I wish whoever took it had been satisfied with a picture. That, unfortunately, was the extent of my artistic work this past season.

I am currently interested in working on my throwing technique, developing new interesting and useful vessels, and in testing the limits of my hand building abilities. I find human sexual experience and expression fascinating and hope to explore it in my work, without being vulgar or too terribly inappropriate. I have already thrown and trimmed a few pots, and I plan on beginning my first hand built piece today.

The type of artists I have learned about this summer include mostly designers and performance dance artists. At the beginning of last year, me and a few of my friends got into the dance style called Vogueing (which was recently exhibited on ABDC), one of my favorite performances is a collaboration between Leo and Lil Black from the House of Evisu at a New York ball in 2007: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvKD4p9G2XQ