I just received my contributor copy of Ceramics: Art and Perception, issue 90, which features my article on on Teri Frame’s excellent six part performance series, Pre-human, Posthuman, Inhuman. The article looks great, as I’ve come to expect from this publication. Ceramics: Art and Perception is available by subscription and at many booksellers — if you click on the image of the article below, you can see a larger version of the first page of the article.
Pity (from the International Council on Cross-Cultural Dynamics) has been accepted to the 2013 NCECA Biennial Exhibition, to be held at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, January 26 – May 5, 2013.
I just received word that I have been awarded a residency for one month at VCCA this spring.
My Bas Relief Cup, Who Will Save Us From The Venusians?, is currently on display at the New Hampshire Institute of Art Ceramics Biennial Exhibition: November 7, 2012 – December 6, 2012.
I just got word that I’ve been juried into Artaxis.org. If you’re not familiar with the site, Artaxis is an international artists site focused on ceramics. Click here to visit my profile, then check out all the other great artists represented.
What would you call a movie featuring Martha Stewart, Ron Paul, Muhammad Ali, Captain Jean Luc Picard, a bear, a rabbit, Giorgione’s Venus, and the flying saucers from Earth Versus the Flying Saucers? Let me know, and it might end up the title of this piece.
Influenced by artists such as Adrian Saxe and Jeff Koons, this series of relief sculptures is based on plastic fast-food promotional cups. Using casts of actual fast-food cups as backdrops, each relief incorporates historical, art historical, political, and pop cultural figures in a movie-poster style collage. The form of the handle is based on the Times New Roman quotation mark. The final pieces are slip-cast ceramic with gold luster.
The first step in producing these sculptures was to slip-cast the original plastic cup (in the first instance, a Subway cup). I then added thin sheets of slip (~1/8 inch thick) cut to conform to the main elements of the design. The majority of the sculpting was accomplished subtractively, but one of the primary benefits of working in casting slip is that, when necessary, mass can also be built up by brushing additional slip onto the surface. I then took a silicone mold of the rough prototype to cast in plaster. The harder material allowed for greater control in the final stages of refinement and detailing. I took an additional silicone mold of this finalized prototype, largely for insurance against damage during the plaster mold making process. It is good that I did, as I went through several prototypes while making the final, four-part plaster mold.
To facilitate the casting process, I made a custom sponge, cast from 10lb two-part expanding foam, to fit inside the cups. This served two functions: first, it minimized the risk of deforming the walls when using compressed air to free the casts from the mold; second, it provided a safe and convenient way to hold the cups while running seams and refining each cast.
Process from left to right: plaster mold of original Subway cup (cup not shown); slip-cast cup with preliminary relief sculpture; first silicone mold; refined plaster cast from first silicone mold; handle in plaster mold; second silicone mold; final prototype cast from second silicone mold; custom sponge cast using 10lb two-part expanding foam; plaster mold taken from final prototype, with cast cup; cleaned and assembled cups.
Below is the completed first piece:
And a compilation of the relief pieced together in Photoshop from forty separate images. For more images of the first cup, click here.
The Great Flag-Carrier of the Proletarian Culture is the second in a series of steaming teapot sculptures entitled I3CD, or the International Council on Cross-Cultural Dynamics. Read about it here, or check out The Great Flag-Carrier of the Proletarian Culture by clicking the image below.
Here is my new figural teapot, a likeness of Doris Day created for collector, dealer, and author Mark DelVecchio. For more, click the image below.
I have settled on the title On the Edge of Forever for the Doctor Bones teapot in Laurie Beth Clark’s Ossuary. This is a reference to the Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever,” in which a maddened Doctor McCoy leaps through a sentient portal in time, The Guardian of Forever. To see more, click the image below.
I created Bones for Laurie Beth Clark’s Ossuary. I have yet to decide on a title, so feel free to suggest one. To see more of Bones, click the image below.
