This Grad School Thing....

"I don't know where to begin because I have nothing to say, yet I know that before long I will sound as if I am on a crusade."
~ Mary Ruefle

My first semester of graduate school has ended. It's been a journey in balance...While it has been an experience to return to school full time, it's been challenging and refreshing all the while. I'm learning not just a strong studio practice, but as well as a life practice. I'm learning to talk about my work in a deeper sense and to ask more questions about it or embrace those questions not yet answered. There is nothing glamorous about this, and while I struggle on those days or weeks of absolutely no sleep...I still feel very fortunate to be here and very excited to see what comes of my work. How will it develop? How will it improve? How will I change? And what answers will I find along the way?

I've changed clay bodies recently and begun to work with a mid range porcelain...and I love it! Through the studio practices I had, the sgrafitto I was doing, and the results I was getting; I began to discover that the porcelain was giving me the exact surface I was interested from beginning until the end. A white canvas, subtle colors, and a soft surface to match the soft forms of my figures.

I have also begun doing a lot of mono-printing with my sketches. Slip trailing and painting the images on news print to then transfer on to the clay surface. Thinking also about a sense of "interior life" and the interior of my vessels, as well as altering the forms I make to fit the fluid and organic motion of the body and image. Space, movement, line, and touch seem to be prominant in my work...I'm curious to see how this develops while in school.

Here are some images documenting the processes I have been exploring...food coloring has also played a role in how I work out design.

The last grouping of work to be fired for my final crit had some glaze mishaps....I lost detail in the images due to thickness and had crawling or dry surfaces. Just like ceramics to constantly be keeping me on my toes. Next semester will hopefully be filled with time developing glazes and experimenting-- I've already got the test tiles ready to go!