Siobhan Coyne @k00280489 - Tumblr Blog

Narrative of the senses project

The idea I have for this project is to do it about the courtyard outside the college.

I just find it very interesting with all the different senses that it evokes. Like the smokyness from people smoking and the dampness from the rain and the energy of people around laughing and parking their bikes there. There are the cool visuals of the graffiti as well .

Some of my ideas and what I want to make. I thought it would be cool to try and capture the graffiti to use Lino prints or plaster and carve them out and then press them into the clay.

I'm also interpreting in getting a smokey effect on a few pieces.

To create the effect of water droplets I can place pieces of glass onto the piece while it's in the kiln.

Making single parts of a bike and disassembling it .

Final display

Artist research Philip Elgin

Narrative of the senses

After the bisque firing I added the glaze to paint on the graffiti detail on two of the vessels as well as the astray. The photos above is of one and I forgot to take many photos of the other before firing except one.

This is the one I forgot to take photos of and the photo next to it is of it fired. The firing didn't go correct so I didn't get the change to take many photos as it has to be fired again as well as the other vessel above.

The last thing I made was a bike wheel to show the part of the courtyard that many people leave their bikes. I forgot to take any photos of this piece as well. But I made it by creating a tubular piece and and made a circle. I had a little flat ball in the middle in circle and using an extruder I made the thin tubes and then I made another circle to sandwich the pieces.

I connected everything with slip. I added texture to the outside of the wheel from a tool in my set it had a texture similar to a wheel. I wanted this piece to be coloured so I put a purple slip onto it.

Narritive of the senses

I put this piece in the smoke fire and when it came out it had broken in a very clean cut and it fits perfectly together.

I really like how everything came out, the different tones of grey and brown.

Narrative of the senses

To capture the smokiness of the courtyard where many people take their smoke breaks. I asked Elaine and Mary what kind of technique I could do to get a smokey look on my pieces and they said that we could do a smoke firing.

It is very interesting how we were able to do this process. So we went outside to make these. So we had sawdust, tin foil, pigments, salt, natural matter like leaves and newspaper. First thing to do is have a newspaper and pour some of the sawdust or hay sprinkled some pigments and salt and placed some leaves and flowers and then places the ceramic piece and wrap it in the newspaper.

We crumple up newspaper and sprinkle in the sawdust and hay into the tin bin. As the base at first and then create a layer of ceramics and then another layer of newspaper and sawdust and repeat. The heaviest stuff was placed at the bottom and the most delicate at the top. We then placed some pieces of wood.

We placed the bin over in the corner away from the open, with calm weather. We lit it on fire with barbecue lighting fluid as it is much safer than petrol or other lighter fluids. We let if fire up until all the wood was fully inflamed and then we put the lids on the bins and didn't take the lids off till the next morning when it had fully cooled down.

Artist research: Grayson perry

Artist research: Roberto lugo

Artist research: ken eastman

Artist research: Amy Mackle

Artist research: Serena korda

The piece above is called ‘ and she cried me a river’ it's a collection of some big beads joined together on a piece of rope that makes it like a piece of jewellery like our wearable unwearable project.

Narrative of the senses

To carry on from the ashtray I made before Easter I made 2 others and tried different techniques on them to portray the courtyard.

The one I made before Easter was where I tested out some of my stamps to create the graffiti and I didn't get a chance to think about adding slip before firing so I just added underglaze and a clear glaze for the colours. It didn't fire correctly as the glaze is still a bit seen so it needs to be fired again to make sure the glaze is translucent. And that's why I don't have any clear photos of it yet as it will be done tueday morning.

The next ashtray I did was a smoke-fired one and I really like how it came out. The different tones and the smell is so strong still. I placed a leaf on the underside of it and thru the burning process it burnt up but left an imprint.

The last one I made, I wanted to create a sense of the wetness of the courtyard as there are always little puddles and the rain makes everything a little wet. I forgot to take a photo of what this looked like before I fired it. But I just put on a white glaze and used a dropper to as some streams and little puddle of a turquoise glaze.

Narrative of the senses

This is the third vessel piece I made. This one was kind of different in that I used one big slab for all the sides and then one for the bottom.

I liked the idea of making an imperfect circle, as it turned out more oval.

It was much quicker to assemble this piece compared to the others as the one one slab could carry it's own weight. But creating that curved side in the clay made it crack a little in the parts I put the imprints in and I had to very carefully smooth some of it out as it could ruin my designs.

I like the round shape of this one as it looks more like one continuous wall covered in graffiti rather then the several walls I created with the others.

Narrative of the senses

Second piece I made in the same way as the last but with 4 sides.

But some things turned out different to what I thought, where I put the hail satan it was meant to be a sort of orange flour but it didn't really come out like that. But hopefully when it is glazed the colour should come out better.

After it came out of the kiln I saw that it was split down one side over half way. It isn't too bad but I know that it is like that because I originally didn't score and slip all the way up and then I impulsively pushed it together.

Narrative of the senses

This is the first piece I made last week for the project.

It is a sort of a architectural piece. I made it out of three sides slabs and then a have slap. I used my libo stamps on the three slabs and let them dry out on the plaster casts and It took quite long for them to be stiff enough to stand up.

I think I added too many stamp imprints in this one and when I added more slip and painted on the surface it was a little too crowded and the surface wasn't flat enough to do good paper resist.

After the slabs were able to stand I cut them into the shape I wanted and arranged them to fit together, and cut and slip them. I didn't plan the form exactly and just went with the flow . I didnt plan for this piece to have the pointy tops and to look like a flame but i like how that came out and how it is intresting how this is the one i desided to smoke fire , i just think its fitting.

I painted the slip onto the forms after letting. Them get more sturdy and I did some paper resist and also painted straight onto the clay. The clay had become leather hard at this point so I had to spray it with water so the slip could stay on the surface and not flake off.

Narrative of the senses

This week was about experiencing with different techniques and planing out what we are going to be doing for the next three weeks.

I decided to try and make some lino prints and try putting them into the clay.

I cut out some odd pieces of clay into slabs and tried some of them out.

I made an ashtray as well and tried out using the stamps onto that as well.

It was more difficult on the ashtray as there was no backing for the stamp to push against so I just used my fingers .

Ceramics group project: wearable unwearable

These are my pieces after coming out of the kiln, I really like how they came out. I was worried I made some of them too thin and that they would feel to delicate when they were done but they came out sturdy.

I really like how the colours they ended up as especially how the piece that was fired at a higher temperature came out so much darker.

On Monday we decided to do the wearable part of wearable/unwearable.

The first thing we had to do was make a string or chain for the beads to stay on. I braided some strings to make them stronger and put the beads onto them. We had to make separators between the beads so they wouldn't bang against each other and damage. We all put on our pieces and took some photos.

On Tuesday we all came together and combined all our pieces to make two big chains.

It probably can't be called a chain as it doesn't loop around but it's attached to two pillars. We planned out the arrangement of the beads on the floor next to the church gallery and when we saw all the beads together we knew that the separators were too big and distracted from the beads so we cut them down in size so they were only a centimetre or 2 in size. It was lovely to collaborate with the other students and get their opinions as well as voice your own. I loved creating this big piece of work that wouldn't be possible without everyone's collaboration.

Some people's pieces were too delicate to put on the chain so we left them on the podium.

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Siobhan Coyne