The True Test of a Sculpture...

is to chuck it down a hill

(Michaelangelo)

New Termite Piece

I’m delighted and thrilled to welcome another addition to the Termite family! It’s smashing to see a familiar face and he will be much loved of course, what with him being the cutest and all!

This white clay is best for sculpting because it is very soft and malleable. Not the best for threading though! Trying to sew the worms through the holes with this stuff was like trying to play pool with a rope, or have sex while rotten-eyed drunk! It was like knitting fog, I tell thee! Of the thirteen coils you can see on the front, there were at least fifty on the waste pile! All buzzin’ now however!

The rear side is so messy that it would take a perfectionist to even try and tidy it up. It’s best accepting the messiness as a design in and of itself.

And as for me, well, you know, I’m just spinning along on this wheel of life like everyone else, unable to get off, pause it for breath, or speed the damn thing up. Still learning from the same old mistakes, still shouting at pigeons, and still feeling occasionally hopeful despite being vaguely dissatisfied but uncertain why. Ya heard. Over and out. Roger that. Yup. Yippee. Hooray. Laters.

Ceramic Cocktail

This cup was accidentically fired prematurely (hence the blank white handle). It took about six or seven hours, believe it or not, to get to this stage (with another 2 or 3 hours anticipated to be left), and the gritty, grainy, patchwork appearance was slightly unexpected. It was meant to be the cup to end all cups, but apparently not. Somebody recommended nail varnish to finish it off. Can anybody advise where a good cheap nail varnish can be purchased? Don't say 'girlie store'.
The most pleasing aspect of the cup so far are the faint white squiggles to the left of the handle there (click to enlarge).
The above is a wall ornament (Sumerian Wheel). The Sumerians were an early civilisation, BC. I don't think they invented the wheel but it was an era when the development of writing was getting into flow. The best thing about this wall ornament is the lovely flash from the camera - not bad for a measly 2.0 megapixel. What I don't like is how faint that shade of olive green paint looks on the wall (Dulux, that, not cheap basic line gunk. Yes, Dulux, who claim to have over 15,000 colours in their range of paints. 15,000? More like 2 - bull, and shit).

One good thing about having useless handmade artifacts clogging up precious living space is being able to photograph them whenever a hint of sunlight threatens to spill over us. There are all sorts of combinations to be strived for. The ultimate goal is to glue everything together into one super structure and sell it for £75 billion outside The Royal Pavillion (transport WILL be a problem, no matter how much bubble wrap you've got). Seriously, what would you prefer, an alignment of ornaments displayed on a shelf/in a cabinet, or a single zany knock-out sculpture dominating a single corner of the room? Answers on a postcard please ladettes and batty men to 77 Skid Row, Belch Avenue, Endsville, no later than the 32 of Neverember, 2012.

The Ceramic Devision
Ornamento-skulp
Wheel of Life

Curlicue & Bamboo

all original blob designs protected
Copyright Okus Pocus

TheCeramicDevision

MakePaintCook

Elephant Tree

Clay, hands, knife....and spit.

TCD

make paint cook

Golden Grapes gone wrong....now they're Black Balls

all original blob designs are

Copyright Okus Pocus

New Ornaments

No plan, no design......just making whatever comes to mind. It's really simple and fun.

For the one on the left, I used the extractor to give me a fat coil and wound it up into a cup shape, slicing the bottom flat with a knife so it could stand up. Then I did the same with a slimmer coil and put the slim one inside the fat one. To top it off I rolled two balls to go into the top. Somebody said it looks like a sex aid, or a man getting choked in a big hand.

The one on the right started as a small vase, before I cut it in half and inserted the bottom half into the top half. Then I hand-cut and rolled a kind of clay straw for the little rolled worms to go into.

Judging by the similarity of these, I think I will classify them under an 'insertion' technique, because of how they are configured from dual parts. That gives me several personal techniques I have discovered without ever reading a single paragraph about 'how to' in pottery. The sheer physicality of a piece when it comes about through trial and error and suddenly takes shape is worlds apart from dealing with words in ink or words on a computer screen when writing about ideas and make-believe characters. One moment you're down after cocking something up, but with the next you're high when it becomes something good you didn't expect.

Projected colours: Gold and Blue

When you're building instinctively you will always run into problems, but there is always a way out or around them. The worst that can happen is scrunching the clay up and starting again.

Sumerian Wheel

This is probably thee knock-out mainstream ornament to date. It looks great anywhere and catches the light superbly. This is an exception as there would usually be the trademark WOL red & white flag in the very centre of the coils, but it didn't turn out in this one due to human error. Some glazes are stronger than others and the weaker ones, instead of providing the finishing touch, tend to disintegrate within them.

The coils here are green; the rim of the wheel is gold. Gold is thicker than green, so on the coils would hide more of the detail. The Kong Island Range focuses on green and gold primarily, throughout its products; these two colours are head and shoulders above the others when it comes to finished veneer.

THE CERAMIC DEVISION

presents

......THE KONG ISLAND RANGE......