I am pretty sure that I am very close to finding a way of making my ideas real. Just have to test few more things :) Here are some of my latest tests: Can't wait to see them fired :)

In the meantime I started to work with fiber-clay made of the casting slip- and this one is even stronger and looks more promising :) First I have prepared the porcelain casting slip which wasn't that hard as I thought it will be. There are just few simply steps to do it: 1. Get a bucket (big one) and put 2l of water 2. Dissolve 26g of dispect in 600ml of HOT water then add to the bucket  3. Cut porcelain in small pieces and put them into the water so they are well covered 4. When you have about 1/4 of a porcelain bag already in the bucket start mixing everything with the big blender :)  5. Add more porcelain to the mixture slowly until it will become nice and smooth. I have mixed the casting slip with nylon fiber ( 1l+ 20g) and then dried it on the plaster bat.                        Simple archers are collapsing a bit but I hope to learn how to con...

It was a long time since my last entry and lots of things happened. I have the results of the firing of the thrown pieces :  I am happy with the results. They are a bit too chunky but as I told you before I have very little of throwing skills. I got few ideas from this pieces - I think they will be a great wall pieces. I also started to think about simplifying my design and maybe concentrate more on joined arches rather then trying to build bigger structures with them. If I will be able to find out how to make nice 'waves' it will be easier to take it from there and think bigger :) Together with my thrown pieces I have fired similar forms made of paper-clay and fiber- clay. The paper-clay didn't work at all - it went flat as a pancake.... but!  Surprisingly the fiber-clay worked quite well :)                                      ...

I was advised by my tutors to try different approaches in my tests and maybe get more 'clay' look instead of  plastic. One of the suggestions was to try to throw something on the potters wheel  instead of press-moulding. Let's be straight here I do like to learn to throw but so far I am far from being good at it. I have decided that I will use my lack of experience as a main feature of this bath of work - I made my cylinders wobbly and bumpy. I decided that I would like to cut sections out of my cylinders and see how the temperature will affect the form. The next step was cutting cylinders in halves and assembling them the same way as I did with plastic. The main problem I am dealing with is that when plastic is geven a shape - a bottle ie.- it's keeping it when porcelain wants to get straight no matter what. That's why I am trying to make it remember the circular shape by throwing it. My next step will be ca...

Over all I am quite pleased with the results. My pieces moved slightly in the kiln but I think they look pretty  much the same as in green stage. My next firing will be a test for bigger constructions to see how the things will work when joined together :) Here are few of my results :)  1220 C

Today I took part in Dyson Creativity Day organized by Design Hob and Dyson in Tullamore. We were given a task to design futuristic objects that will fit the life in 20 years. It was a good experience as we had a chance to work in small groups of complete strangers. We also had to work fast, the total time was about 5 hours. Here are some of the groups and their ideas:                                                                                                                 And the winners :

This week was a great challenge for me... I had tried to build my units out of porcelain, paperclay and finally fibreclay. In the beginning nothing worked - the curvy strips were getting straight when they dried or they weren't strong enough to build with them. Even now I still don't know how they will turn out after firing. Porcelain moves a lot in the kiln and I like it but this time I have to find a way to compromise it's desire to move with my idea of form I would like to achieve. Here are some of my test from this week. I am planning to fire them on Friday so the results will be on Monday. Please keep your fingers crossed for me :) This are just porcelain tests the middle one was a W and that's what is left of it after few hours. The last piece and the cylinder probably will collapse in the kiln... Well we'll see :) Now that's paperclay. As you can see on the bottom photo it also went flat after joining two pieces. I really hope the middle...