Rock Stream
Ideas:
As part of the 3d art installation that Jack and I are doing for the poem project we are constructing a river of rocks. My poem is about the three senses touch, feel, and smell and how those senses and how those senses shape ones view of nature. There is a contrast in this poem between the ocean and forests. So to symbolize the ocean Jack and I are creating a river stream leading from the forest into the ocean. Jack Chose a poem about the destruction of nature so on either side of the river we are going to have one sude be dedicated to pictures of nature that jack has taken and on the otherside of the river we will have trash scattered ruining the environment. The contrast of our poems connects to the theme of self sabotage because one poem (one side of the river) represents the effects of destroying the environment and the other poem (the other side of the river) represents the beauty of the environment.
Materials:
The materials Jack and I are using for our rocks is lowfire 612 clay. We are using glazes such as ancient jasper, lichen moss, lichen beige, ms black, cappuccino, oilspot, gunmetal, ms light blue, autumn green, and ms light green. Clay was the most obvious choice for our rocks because we would be able to mold the clay into whatever shapes we wanted to and clay is technically a form of sedimentary rock. Clay also allows us to create the quantity of rocks we need. The glazes that we chose are all earth tones and water tones. We want the rocks to represent both the earth and that they are submerged in water. Glaze also gives our rocks a glossy effect which makes them look wet.
Current Artist: Penelope Dews
Master Artist: Grayson Perry
Process:
This process has been quiet difficult. From the beginning we knew we would have to make our rocks hallow inorder to keep them light and to conserve clay. So Jack and I had to trouble shoot the most effective way for creating hallow rocks. At first we shaped the rocks on a bowl however this proved difficult because taking the rocks off of the outside or inside of the bowls completely destroyed their shape. Instead we used the pinchpot method to hallow out our rocks. The next step was to figure out how we would glaze the rocks. We wanted to record the glazes and combinations we used on each rock so when we waxed the inside of the rocks so that they could be fired on stilts in the kilm we also numbered each rock and put wax on the number so we could see it. This system was difficult becuase dipping the rocks meant that the hallow inside of the rocks became filled with glaze and if we didnt wait long enough for the wax to set then wiping the glaze out of the rocks would also wipe the wax off. After dipping about 7 rocks we concluded that painting the rocks would be more of an effective method so that we could control where the glazes went and it simplified the glazing process.
