Joyce Lee on wed 25 sep 02
I had no idea there was so much
interest in leaves on pots..... or
leaf pots. So...... ok.....
I am no expert, as we all know .... but
I'm the one being asked ... so ..... the
way I make the simplest leaf bowl.... small
bowl limited by size of the leaf ... is to
use a slab, roll leaf imprint into the
slab, cut around leaf imprint, re-emphasizing if needed the veins in
the leaf ...... give leaf time to firm up a little=20
... drape the leaf over the end of a=20
balloon to form bowl shape, readjusting
if it starts to slip ..... apply feet .... maybe
a handle ..... takes minutes.... but does
need time to dry and does need
readjusting from time to time.
Very simple but, you're right, folks do like
them. I use as giveaways I would imagine that this would
be a good kid's project also.
Funny about the giveaways. For instance,
I have maybe 16 friends helping me
gather a variety of leaves .... so I'll use
each friend's leaves to make a pot or
plate or platter to give to that friend .....
THEN they'll begin saving their leaves for
me ...... so that I'll make them more freebies. Although it's not the =
"free"
that attracts them; it's that something
appealing is decorated using materials from
their own yards. The clay bug infects
once more ....... or sixteen times more.....
There are many more complicated=20
methods for making leaf pots, of course,
and I use some of them ... but the
questions have centered around how to make
them have a more organic feel than
is achieved from pushing the leaf into
shape ..... the balloon does the trick.
Joyce
In the Mojave
What I really love about clay, I think, is
the many processes that somehow
remain the same ....... yet change constantly.... from the simplest leaf
bowl to the magnificence of an honest-to
-Pete teabowl ... be it a summer, a winter,
a spring or a fall form ...... I can do
the leaves, but the teabowls elude me.
And what really is the pits is that when
an artist/craftsman achieves the desired
perfection of teabowl forms, most others have no idea what their eyes =
are not-seeing.
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