Look at these beauties

These little ceramic bas reliefs are responsible for the majority of the work of our sculpture class this semester. We are collaborating with Ferris' Card-Riley Wildlife Center to create touchable displays for the museum. It has been quite a journey and a huge learning experience for all of us. It's a good thing we had excellent help  and advice along the way. Below are a few of them up close, right before they were bisque fired. The students are currently working on the glazes. Stay tuned for the color versions.

 

Practice

My students have been working on a ceramics bas relief from imagery they took from Ferris' natural history museum, the Card-Riley Center. The pieces will be displayed along with their original source animal/plant/fish, as touchable art. I've done some work with ceramic clay before, but it has been a longgg time. As a refresher, I made this little  piece loosely based on an image I took under a pier in San Diego. Or it could have been La Jolla. I'm surprised at the level of detail you can get with this type of clay.

    The student's work looks great, and the next step for us, after the bisque firing, is to paint on the glazes. I wish I had a little more time and patience to fuss with this one, but I reckon it will do as a place to experiment with the glazes.

 

PolyTerra 3D Filament

 Shortly after I started the whole 3D printing project, the idea that I was going to be contributing to the plastic problem on the planet came home to roost. Since then, I've been working on the problem, and this beauty is the beginning of the answer.   

    PLA, or polylactic acid, is a resin made from corn starch. It is marketed as biodegradable, but for that to happen in a decent amount of time (less than years) it needs to be composted under factory conditions. The PLA I've been using to print is in that category. The filament in the picture is a compostable variety that contains a bio compound that makes it degrade much faster than regular PLA. It is made by PolyMaker and is called PolyTerra. PolyMaker plants one tree for each spool of filament sold, and the spool and box are compostable as well. The only flaw is the plastic bag the filament comes in, which is necessary because PLA is hydroscopic, meaning that it absorbs water from the air. I hope PolyMaker can eventually find a compostable solution for that storage issue as well some day.

     I'm currently shopping for a composter that will get warm enough (140F) for decomposition to take place. I'm also making friends with Food Services at Ferris. Scott, their manager, also has an interest in a composting program, so we are combining forces to get this project off the ground. He will provide food waste and cardboard, we are planning to contact the grounds department for yard waste, and in the mix will go the extra plastic that is created by mistakes and support material generated during printing. If this filament prints nicely, I'll try to get the Makerspace, the 3D printing lab at Ferris, to start using it, too. In the end, the compost will result in good soil, which we hope to turn into an herb garden for Food Services. 

    This, plus dumping the two classroom system and taking my vitamins has cheered me right up.

     

     

 

Three Classes, Three Improvisations

   Today was the first day I abandoned the split classroom format, and oh, my gosh, what a pleasure it was. I know I'm not keeping my people as safe as they were, but instead of taking time to fuss with technology and walk between classrooms, I had time to focus on my real job, which is teaching. My prayer is that they will all see reason and get vaccinated. My only struggle is getting them to keep their masks over their noses.

    I usually run a pretty tight ship, because I think that this may be their only real art instruction in their lives, and if I give them enough fundamentals, they will be better equipped to carry on by themselves later in life. But, we just finished the first assignment, and it felt like I needed to loosen them up a bit. So, I introduced them to the idea of making a non-objective image and set them loose with some charcoal and an eraser. They struggled a bit, because they have been conditioned to think that art has to represent something. After a bit of prodding and more than a few excuses, they were able to make some interesting images. When we do things like this, I try to stay out of their way until they are at the point of needing a push. In the meantime, I usually make an image of my own. So, here are the pieces I did as examples to get them started, and how they ended up while I waited to talk to them. These took about 10-15 minutes each. I think I love my job again.

 

Where I left it

   So far today, I've had two painting sessions, and I don't seem to be able to leave the faces alone. Through the course of the first session, every one of the mother's features were obliterated and re-painted. I still see some things to fix before I can bring the values up. But it's closer. And I think I'm going to make the shirt yellow-ish instead of pink. So it can be gender neutral.

    Sometimes I am really grateful for the peace of my studio and the work I can do there. It is a big stress reliever to journey inward and paint. 

   Right now, I need it, because my university, where I am scheduled to teach four face to face classes in the fall at full capacity, has chosen to not require vaccines, have a mask mandate or social distancing. My students, unless something changes, will be sitting elbow to elbow for an hour and 50 minutes, twice a week. 

    I was so proud of how Ferris handled the pandemic last year, and I felt lucky because they worked hard to keep us safe. I don't know where that leadership has gone. I hope that my fellow faculty members and our student parents will speak up and demand safety for us all. Otherwise, this is going to be a rough semester.

 

Our Tubman Banner

The First Batch

   I'm so proud of these guys. These are three of the images made by my students that I'm planning to send in for publication of the program for The Journey of Harriet event in March. The top one is by Jesse, the middle one by Dex and the last one by Haley. 

   So, even though I only get to walk by my painting and rub the belly of the mama like she was a lucky Buddha, it's all good.