My original idea has evolved a lot since I first decided to create a ceramic wall installation. Originally, I had talked about creating something similar to this experiment that I did last quarter.......
I spent the first few weeks of the quarter building pieces like this directly on drywall to see if it would uphold through firing. I had no idea if it was going to work.........and turns out...it did not :( They all broke apart into lots of small little groupings of frosting.
But...I am actually glad that it didn't end up working because it forced me to start thinking of a new direction to take. With my original idea, I was struggling to visualize how I would arrange the installation and felt like I was starting to focus more on the technique and process of "frosting" with clay and less on my themes of domesticity, memory, and nostalgia.
At the same time that this was all happening, I was working on a collaborative 4'x8' woodcut print with Heather Kegel. Our work has some interesting similarities in themes. We decided to make a composition of damask patterns that references worn wallpaper.
I knew that I needed to have hollow ceramic forms as a base structure to pipe the clay "frosting" onto so that it would hold up when fired. I had tested that before and knew that it would work. I was in damask pattern mode from making the woodcut print, and was inspired to make abstracted damask forms out of clay. I cut out a bunch of paper stencils and hung them on the wall to start playing with how this all might look when installed. I feel like going this route more strongly relates to my concept and the themes that I have been exploring through my work and bringing back damask patterns as a motif.
These are the forms I have built and this is a rough arrangement of how I envision installing them on the wall. Now I'm at the point where I will start working on the surface of these forms. I plan on screen printing a very soft subtle damask pattern onto parts of the forms and also somehow on the wall behind them (I need to figure out how I want to do this...maybe on paper....maybe directly onto the wall...not sure). I will then pipe "frosting" onto certain areas of the forms. I have screen printed onto clay before, but it has been a while, so I am going to make some quick test slabs today to make sure that it will work in the way that I am envisioning it to.
Phew!!! Well that's an update on where I am at this point!! I'm very excited that things are finally starting to come together. I spent the past few weeks freaking out a bit and had a few minor meltdowns haha, but I finally feel good and have a much clearer vision of what the final installation might look like!
Look forward to seeing you all tonight!! :)
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