#blobography

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Glazing Over with Brendan Monroe

Anyone who’s dabbled in ceramics knows that things don’t always turn out the way you expect them to. Clay shrinks and colors change. Glazes crack and bubble. Experimenting with different combinations is an intriguing guessing game—one that painter/sculptor Brendan Monroe immersed himself in for our collaboration on Blobography.

Take a look at his ceramic pieces in the show, and you’ll see colors, textures and movement you don’t usually see with clay. Maybe it’s because his work often depicts alternate beings in alternate worlds, but there’s a thrilling sense of aliveness (yes, we made up that word) in what we’ve endearingly called his blobs.

Curious to know how he and Heath LA studio manager Alex developed these special pieces, we probed them on their process. Blobography: Brendan Monroe x Heath will be at Heath LA through November 30. See the full Blobography gallery here. 

What did you want to achieve with the glaze combinations?

Alex: I feel like we were trying to really bring the blobs to life with glaze. Sometimes glazed ceramics can feel very static, so we tried to maintain the graphic quality of Brendan’s drawing and painting—so active and playful. Also, making the pieces not feel like pottery was important. Using the glazes in a way that people weren’t used to seeing—looking for lots of drips, textures, and matte bubbly surfaces.

Brendan: I had a surface in mind that was really active and textural. When we got going on testing the possibilities it also became important to capture the movement of the glaze in its fluid heated state. Some of my favorite and most satisfying results were when the glaze solidified in mid-drip. It’s almost like capturing a lava flow and freezing motion.

I could easily keep going with the glaze combination experiments. I think we had about 40-50 test tiles. There were really about 10 that were close to what we wanted and then they were refined as best as possible from there.

Were there any experiments that didn’t come out how you planned but that you liked?

A: Lots of happy accidents—most notable was probably the piece with thick white/green crawling glaze that exposes the clay underneath (photo above). This was one of the first pieces made during Brendan’s initial working visit to the studio. We were basically unable to achieve this glaze effect on subsequent pieces.

B: I think we were aiming for the widest possibility of happy accidents. One of my favorites and most difficult to repeat was the Mellon and Opaque White piece that we used for our postcard. The glaze was so heavy that it began to fall off the clay itself and leave bare spots. On repeat attempts we the glaze often broke the piece in half during the cooling process.

How was working with clay and glaze different than working with wood?

B: The clay often wants to be done right the first time. It records very well the way it’s pushed and pulled, but then it collapses if it’s pushed too much. It’s not a medium that’s easy to work on continuously either. There is a lot of timing involved that is not very usual for me. Some parts could be sculpted, then I’d have to wait for them to dry a little before I could continue with the next part. With wood and with painting, I just work straight through nearly to the end on my own schedule. The clay’s properties are changing while the sculpture is being made. There aren’t many materials that do that.

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See the full Blobography gallery here.

Photos 1 & 4 courtesy Brandon Shigeta

Reblogged from Heath Ceramics

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November 20, 2014

BLOBOGRAPHY

Huge thanks to everyone who has made this show great!

The exhibition of new ceramic sculptures, drawings and paintings runs for two more weekends in Los Angeles. Please stop in an take a look if you're in town. The show goes until November 30.

The work can be seen here and is available for delivery by phone or email.

Have a look at the makers slideshow with photos by Ye Rin Mok.

Blobography Heath Ceramics 7525 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles CA 90036 Ph. 323 965 0800 [email protected]

photo bshigeta

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Blobography

This zine was published on the occasion of the Blobography exhibition at Heath Ceramics in Los Angeles. The pages feature black and white drawings and sketches made for the show to complement the ceramic sculptures. The exhibition runs November 1 - 30, 2014. Xerox printed on recycled paper. 8 x 5.5 inches or 20.5 x 14 cm, 28 pages.