I am pleased to announce that I have finally completed my biggest project to date – a full size cattle form made of stoneware clay that stands on a perspex frame. It has been a scary but exceptionally satisfying journey apart from the rest of my life coming to a complete standstill to get the thing finished in time. Now I can breathe! Sort of… MAFA crits to grit one’s teeth for this week.
Anyway – back to the cow. I made it in several stages. I started with a cow structure made from chicken wire and stuffed with shredded paper and balled newspaper
I then threw some huge pots, left them to firm up a little and cut them open. I then placed the floppy bits of clay over the structure to form a full-sized cow skin from clay. I poured a red slip over parts of it. Once it had hardened a bit I cut the chicken wire frame up into more manageable pieces and then cut the cut down to fireable sized bits.
Wet cow
Once dry they were biscuit fired and reassembled as one flat puzzle for glazing. I used a simple matt glaze recipe I had adjusted and coloured the glaze using the same iron rich red clay I used as the slip. I glazed most of the outside of the skin, leaving some parts exposed for aesthetic effect. The inside was painted with a greyish engobe, The pieces were fired to 12oo deg C. Then the fun began – putting Humpty Dumpty together again. I assembled it upside down in a bed of kiln bricks and shredded paper and adhered mosquito netting to the inside of the structure to join all the bits together again. Fun fun – painfully slow and exhausting to paint on the adhesive but I lived to tell the tale. In the midst of all the glueing and things I made some pegs out of porcelain and some pinkish burnished earthenware horns.
I also added perspex ribs to the inside to provide some support and structure. A-frame trestles to support the structure were also made. When the glue had dried and several failed attempts had been repaired the whole thing was put back the right way round on top of the trestles. Wow – it looks wonderful but was such a lot of work. The price of perspex did not help much either.
The whole thing has taken almost 2 months to complete – from initial sketches to fired and assembled sculpture.
Tags: Art, big, cattle, ceramics, nivea start
