End of Year Show

End of year show looked fantastic - we scrubbed the rooms up well and with a fresh lick of paint and some new boards they looked like proper exhibition spaces. I think our year was a talented bunch and it was really good to see the culmination of everyones two years. Annoyingly I did not take a camera but grabbed a couple of pics of Jasons facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.423018121083059&type=1

The gold looked great but perhaps a bit strong and distracting from the other more delicate work.

Thats the end of the course and the end of this course blog... Thanks to anyone who stopped by! I am a bit hooked on blogging though so will continue with a post college, big wide world blog at http://stevenwillblog.blogspot.co.uk/

show build

All making finished and after a couple of days cleaning and painting the studio it was time to start putting show together. Discussions with tutor helped refine what goes in and how its displayed. We decided on the pots and we decided to display them on a couple of perspex shelves. I was keen to keep a plinth too - bit of a cliche with pots on it but that was the idea, elevating trash to art and a plinth in a gallery is good short hand...

measuring up

final shelves after hours of sanding saw marks off the edges

gold... a bit tacky but lovely

...and I managed to include my ceramic bin. Nicely hidden around the corner, unlabelled and unmarked. I hope visitors accidently add their own rubbish to it...

Everything submitted now so just have to sit back and wait for show opening...

pulling it together

Last few weeks of project, trying to tie up loose ends. Firstly the bin/print piece. Still not sure about this one but might suggest having it in the corner of the gallery and see how many people add their litter to it... The concept is strong but the execution not so good - think its the rough quality of my bin that is really letting it down.

I always intended to take my litter casts back to where I found their source material and re photograph them. I liked the idea of extending this to leaving behind the porcelain casts with a note asking people to take them home and post photos to a tumblr account of the pots in their new homes... taking recycling even further... This has had to remain a proposal for now as run out of time, something to investigate in the future.

A belgian margarine tub from the beach by Black Rock

a polystyrene coffee cup from The Level

taking casts further

Thinking about how to continue with project post-college I have been combining what I have learned about casting and packaging but opening up my self-imposed limitations to allow bought packaging from supermarkets rather than just found litter to act as source mould material..

display ideas

After waiting two weeks for enough sun (this is West Dorset...), it finally came out for two hours on Wednesday and I quickly made cyanotype print maps of Brighton covering the routes I walked when looking for litter. Prints scrunched and ready to throw in the bin.

This is the first bunch of earthenware casts I made from collected litter. Casts pretty crude but were first step in getting towards more refined porcelain versions. These have just been dipped in an unbelievably thick white glaze.... I expect some crawling (I would have thinned it right down but it was a big new batch at school)

A rather ugly ceramic bin made of coils of crank. Originally glazed grey but the pink clay showed through where glaze not thick enough (glazing seems to be a perennial problem for me). In the end I spray painted it white which is an improvement.

Put the three together...

last casts

Last batch of litter casts in porcelain, glazed in stoneware clear with an iron oxide rim. Waiting to go in kiln the matt chalky surface of the unfired glaze looks good - must try out a bright white matt glaze at some point;

Fresh from kiln, happily sucessful. All the tests seem to have paid off and I have just the right amount of run from the rim. Rushing back to Brighton so only a quick snap, will photo property soon.

final glaze tests

Last batch if glaze tests came out of the kiln today. Lots of work to do on the colours and what forms they fit (I tried the tan and the green on some deep bowls - the tan looked awful but the green great).

I used slip casts from a squash bottle lid found on the beach for the tests, each colour was single and double dipped;

As expected some more successful than others. I reworked the green and the turquoise a bit and they are improved. The red is still bad. The pink is terrible as is the yellow but I dont think I would like them however they came out, they are not my colours...

Final iron oxide rim test. Inner pot with old batch of clear glaze, outer with new batch. Both batches seem to perform the same. Both fired to 1260 degC with a 30 minute soak. Previous firings went 15 deg higher which seems to be crucial for maximum running. I however am beginning to prefer the more subtle line and running of these pots as opposed to the last batch