WOW Project Ceramics

Our last project for my ceramics class allowed me to make anything I wanted, which makes everything to make become a possibility. To narrow the ideas down I decided to think about things I inspire to, and I will go on from there. The first thing I chose is grasslands. I chose this because this shows my inspiration of grasslands in my home country. I live in a village house back in Indonesia and I am surrounded by grasslands and wheat fields, every time I look around it's the flat surface of the earth terrain. The second thing I picked was the idea of deforestation around my country and village. Every year I see the grassland decrease in its surface area to make space for either animals or industrial factories. I am really against the fact that nature is being destroyed to jus make space for things like factories. And from that point, I knew what to make. I wanted to make a ceramics pieces that had grasslands surrounding a tree, and at the base of the tree I will write, "Don't Cut." 

That is what I wanted to make for the last month of the class. I made the piece with lots and lots of slabs put on top of each other. And each slab gradually gets smaller as the height increases. In middle of the piece, I will put a pole representing the trunk of the tree, and from there I will build up the leafs from there. The base of the tree, I will put a slab of clay standing up which will be the area where I write the words. I used only one main technique to execute the piece. Even though it is only one technique, it made my piece what it is. Slit and score was the technique that I used to hold everything together, especially the tree. Without the slit, I am pretty sure that the tree won't hold its weight up and it would probably break down. Some methods I used throughout was just basically blending the clay with each other at places where it is needed.

Picture was taken by me

This brings me to the challenges that approached me and how I had to overcome them in a limited amount of time. One of the problems was trying to get the trunk of the tree not break, the first time I made it, when it was dried up the trunk broke off the main part of the piece. I fixed this situation by adding clay to the base of the trunk to make it more stable, and I kept doing that until I felt that it was sturdy enough. Another thing was the tree leafs, I initially wanted to do a 2D leaf on top of the trunk, but everything I put it to place it always seems to snap off. So I decided to make it like a lego tree where it extends in all directions instead of one. This allowed me to have more structure to my tree, which made it so much bolder and stronger.

One of my friends actually came up with the Idea of putting the tree in the middle of the grass fields, I think that was the most influential feedback because it added another aspect to my piece that was significant. I think my piece it very original because of the meaning behind it and the design, even though the tree is conventionally used in many things, I used it in a unique way, to show the importance of nature. For the grasslands, I think the idea of the lands from my home country is original and I was able to replicate that to a ceramic piece.

Creativity can be practice many times in a day, for me it comes naturally. If I have to think of something for a school work that includes creativity, I flash back into my memory and rethink what I thought recently and bring that thought back. It can be practiced by just noting everything down, whatever you think, jot it down. Maybe at a certain time, you could combine ideas to make something very original and unique. 
References:

Colonel Bill De Marco. Creativity. Digital image. N.p., 26 June 2015. Web. 26 May 2017.

Rhett Butler. Deforestation. Digital image. Mongabay. N.p., 29 June 2014. Web. 26 May 2017.

Terrace Rice Fields. Digital image. Ezroadtrips. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 May 2017.

Empty Bowls 2017

Empty Bowls encompasses the idea of making bowls for a charity program. Throughout the semester we spent a decent amount of class time to produce bowls from ceramic clay. And no doubt, I had many challenges along the way while making the bowls. One challenge that approached me was when every time I flattened the ball of clay into a flat piece with the slab roller, I always made it too thin. I then realized that I needed to make the clay at least a tiny bit thicker than 1cm, so I can work with the clay without tearing it. Smoothing out the bowls was very frustrating to me, because I always try to smooth the surface of the bowls, but every time it dries out, there is always a hole or an uneven surface on it. This became one of the challenges I faced since it happened many times. To fix it, I decided to smooth the surface with a smoothing tool frequently so it won't have the unnecessary surfaces on the bowl. Another challenge that I experienced was thinking of 5 separate, different designs for my bowls. I overcame this challenge by searching the web for some designs that I can incorporate into my bowls. One design was by Jun Kaneko, his patterns is basically stripes that overlap each other in many ways, the colors are mainly black and white which gives emphasizes the contrasts on the piece. Here is one of the piece that I tried to incorporate. However, I didn't have enough time to completely make a bowl with this design because of the timing in our class. This is one of the 5 bowls I made for the project, also this is one of my favorite ones since I added many patterns to the sides of the bowl.

Picture By Me

           I think this project was very meaningful to me and for the country I live in, because in my country many people are living days without food to eat. They would have to walk along the streets asking for money to get food. Making bowls to help people get food really connects me with this social problem. Every time I make a bowl I feel like I can facilitate people around the country in need for food. The bowls that we made are sold for money and the money that is accumulated will be sent to a organization to help people that are ravenous and dire for food. This makes me happy to know that the bowls that my classmates and I are making, is making a difference to world hunger even though it is only a small scale.
          I think Empty Bowls 2017 was very successful so far, considering the fact that we had only 1 day to sell the bowls to give people to. By the end of the selling session we raised 300 rials for the organization. We also plane to keep selling the bowl during our lunchtime to see how much money we can raise before the end of the school year. Other than the money, I think mutually, everyone that participated on making the bowls helps the project to make it successful. My classmates and I spent our time to make bowls to raise money and everyone had a part in the project. I am pretty sure that the organization, Action Against Hunger, will be grateful to receive money from our school that worked really hard to make this fundraiser happen. In general, Empty Bowls should continue in our next school year, this helps us understand what other people in the world are going through, and we can help them to experience eating food like we all do.

References:
Armin. Action Against Hunger. Digital image. Brand New. N.p., 1 Nov. 2016. Web. 9 May 2017.

Flavio Dandy. Empty Bowls. Digital image. N.p., 9 May 2017. Web. 9 May 2017.

Jun Kaneko. Dango Glazed. Digital image. YMFA. N.p., 2007. Web. 9 May 2017.