White Out (orange clay)
White Out (orange clay)
This series of ceramic "canvases" were made to display the alchemy of glaze materials and the heat of the kiln. They link together the creative process, the material, and the natural world. In the ceramics field, these are considered large-format and are technically challenging to make. The process calls for amping up the tenacity and practicing careful bravery when handling, glazing, and firing them.
A scale shift, they reference ancient clay cuneiforms which are early Mesopotamian and Persian versions of record keeping developed between 3500 and 3000 BCE, and an ironic reference to ubiquitous touchscreen iPad tablets.
The tablets here shift scale and material in an attempt to fossilize, maybe memorialize, temporal gestures of weather and the kiln's heat.
Each tablet is made with 25 pounds of clay pounded into a wooden frame and fired two times in a gas kiln, to a top temperature of cone 5/2200°F. The cable system on the reverse allows the tablet to be rotated and hung on any of the 4 sides.
20" wide x 14.5" tall x 1" thick, 25 pounds