Tuesday is the new Monday

Everyone hates Mondays, well I hate Tuesdays.  As you can see it's now Wednesday afternoon and yesterday has already foiled my intentions of posting everyday.  On Tuesdays, I have work study from 9-12:30, surfaces from 1:30-4:20, advanced throwing from 4:30-7:20, and art history from 7:30-10 at night!  It's absolutely horrible and so as hard as I try to do some work after art history, I am usually so exhausted that I can barely function.  Last night I drove home in a stupor and planned in my mind the fastest and most satisfying dinner I could think of.  I dreamed of a cream cheese bagel with scramble eggs on it, diced onions, tomato, and avocado.  In reality, it was cream cheese smothered onto a piece of toasted bread, horribly scrambled eggs (because I decided to scramble the eggs in the hot pan on the stove to save time and an extra dirty dish) with cut up onion and sriracha chili sauce.  I don't even think I tasted it because I was so tired, which probably saved my evening from total food disaster.


As for the actual work I was doing yesterday, I helped my teacher Dawn Holder with her big installation project that will be on display at the NCECA (National Council on the Education for the Ceramic Arts) which will be at Tampa, FL March 31-April 2.  NCECA is a yearly event and takes place at a different location every year.  Everyone who is anyone in the ceramics world attends and it's a great chance to meet upcoming and established artists from around the country.  There are plenty of exhibitions and shows ceramic supplies to purchase.  I would love to go this year but I cannot afford to do so, but I fully intend to go next year (it's in Seattle!).  Anyways, Dawn's installation consists of 5,000 mussels individually made and glazed out of cone 2-6 paper porcelain and 2,500 blades of sea grass.  I was helping her apply colored slips onto some of the mussels yesterday.  It's a HUGE project and one that I hope will actually be completed in time!  The theme of the installation shows in NCECA this year is migration so Dawn proposed to create work that showed the invasive species of mussels from China that are taking over the waters around Tampa.  The blades of grass are from the Tampa area and are now invading China. 

In my surfaces class, we are doing a gold, red, and blue luster firing which will produce a metallic opaque finish on any surface in the kiln.  Our assignment was to come up with a body of work that plays on at least one of the words he provided: Glamorize, Stylize, Propagandize, or Memorialize.  I chose "glamorize" and this is my idea:  I hate war.  Despise it.  What was once honored and respected in other cultures is now shown as entertainment in current America.  We as citizens are desensitized by violence and what would have been too grotesque and horrible to show in movies decades ago is now shown daily in news reports and video games.  My idea is turn war and violence into something that cannot cause harm.  To do this, I am feminizing weapons.  I'm making bullet bracelets, pistol hairbrushes, nuclear bomb lipstick, grenade earrings, sniper riffle necklace, army tank jewelry box, land mine powder box, etc.  Yesterday I created plaster molds from some bullets I pick up at a riffle supply store and I should expect some miniature toy guns in the mail any day now if not today.

In advanced throwing, my teacher Matt Towers introduced our new assignment to us, the teapot.  It consists of 5 forms that we must make and put together: the body, the lid, the knob, the handle, and the spout.  AND they must all fit and look good together.  We have to make two prototype teapots by next week and we will chose which one we like and make slip cast molds of the spout and handle.  I'm not sure yet what I will be doing.

I have to get back to my Intro to Ceramics class in which I am the teacher's assistant.  I'll be getting my camera charger from my mom and sister this afternoon and hopefully I can upload some pictures of my work in progress.

Ciao!