Pamela Jo Stamper on fri 10 jul 98
Hi Daryl, Joe, Bonnie, and all the clayarters who took time to help,
I won't tell you I am in my workshop making perfect large hollow
extrusions; BUT, Jim Bailey called and many of you offered suggestions.
This is what I learned.
1) My extruder was assembled incorrectly...the plunger wouldn't tip
up because it was too low in the barrel and problems with loading clay may
have caused some of my unsatisfactory results.
2) My clay was probably not satisfactory. For extrusion you need
very plastic clay with only a little or no grog and it must be very soft.
If you use bag clay it must be worked -wedge first.
3) Uneven extrusions can be a result of the die being off center.
For hollow forms the middle piece must be perfectly centered and then the
shape to be extruded must be centered. If the extrusion pulls to one side
the die can be moved to correct it. Also don't cut off right at the
die....the weight of the clay works with you. Hold the shape in your hands
and guide it as you extrude.
4) Finally, practice. We didn't learn to pull shapes on our
wheels in days...so when I finally get a satisfactory clay, I suspect that
I will be spending some quality time with my Bailey.
Thanks to Jim Bailey and all of you. Pamela Jo stamps@seasurf.com
Lorca Beebe on sat 11 jul 98
Well I'm teaching a figure in clay class, and I wanted the students to use
extruded forms this week to transition from there drawrings to a 3-D
sensibility, all three exruders where a pain, I even busted the pusher for the
neumatic one. So I said forget the extruder, I decided to thorw while the
students where working on a long pose and got Tom the lab tech to throw with
me, we used the thrown shapes instead of the extruded parts, and the students
drew and did "bass relief" and painted them with slips while working with the
model. I must say I a was very impressed with the results that came from this
solution to extruded forms, I wanted the class to focus on the figure in a
ceramic-centric way, all the figures are gonna be rakued or pit fired....
Lorca
centa uhalde on mon 13 jul 98
Lorca,
For those of us without benefit of a ceramics program per se, would you
mind elaborating a bit on the method by which you had your students work
with thrown clay to create a "bass relief" of the figure? Is the thrown
piece put on a slab? Do you cut the pot in half and add figurative elements
by further hand shaping an otherwise symetrical pot or half pot, or what?
Curious as usual,
Centa
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Well I'm teaching a figure in clay class,....
Lorca Beebe on thu 16 jul 98
Dear Centa:
I just threw random shapes, and Tom the lab tech threw some pretty nice vases.
I wanted something that the students can transition from drawing 2-D into clay
3-D before they started working on long posses. Some students just painted the
figure using terra sig,slibs, oxides and a ball point pen to create a line
with no burr (needle tool line are very thin and rough), others painted the
vases usind decorative elements and added little chunks of clay to the pot to
creat bas-relief, bas means low in French, relief above the surface, so that
the figure was "raised" from the surface of the pot in a sculptural fashion.
If your interested in bas- relief look at some early Syrian relief, to this
relief they added "surface treatment like sigs, engobes and stains, one
student used a concept I had talked about in class such as the figure as
vessel which is an African philosophy, the body as vessel of experience or
transformative powers or a vehicle, etc, she took the pots and thrown shapes
and warped them to sculpt parts of the figure while still retaining a vessel
shape. I am very excited about this process, I am not a potter, I wanted this
class to deal with the figure in a ceramic-centric way, (I usually consider
potters a nuisance but I cant live without them) The artwork that was done was
very impressive, it really made a difference having the model there for
students to reference, even if they werent being photo-realistic, I think I
would like to give a workshop on this and co-teach with a functional potter...
Hope this information clarified some of the issues,
Lorca
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