Explorative Making
Emily Whitworth
By Emily Whitworth
Explorative Making How far can you push clay? Are the forms clay can make endless?
My process of exploring shapes, forms and colours. Pushing the clay to make interesting and exciting end products.
Connectivity The connection between mind, hand and clay while creating is what makes a ceramacists creations come to life. A maker becomes one with the clay and interacts with the clay to create a finished piece. The connection I have with my surrondings allows me to create work through ceramics that represents what I see with my own eyes. The finished piece needs to make a connection with the viewer to draw them in and bring joy to them. Our senses connect us to everything going on around us and this means a maker can connect to everything they create.
The connection between my mind and hands is the most important when I am making. I create a connection that allows me to be free while I make and allows me to create the surrondings through my own eyes and brings joy to myself and the viewer. Clay has endless oportunities and is very versitile and allows the maker to create whatever they want. The freedom of clay is what makes a maker passionate about creation and the conection between clay and hand is what makes being a ceramacist so special.
The main part of my practice is connecting each extrusion to each other, I make forms and layers of work and each layer creates a new exciting shape. Each added extrusion creates a new shape and respresent a different structure. I like to use a variety of different extrusions to create more variation in shapes and to have some solid and some more tube like so then there are harder and sturdier structures.
Thoughts during making
When creating I like to have a free open mind, I allow the clay to take over and allow myself to create whatever shapes I want. I think about my surrondings and what I see before me and try and create those with the clay extrusions. The shapes mirror the open connection between hands and mind while creating in clay
My work is made as a representation of when I lived in France before I came to university. When I lived there I was in a ski resort and the pattern of the skis on the slope and the pattern of skiing inspires my work, as the marks would weave in and out of each other and create layers. When I am making my work I picture these slopes in my head and imagine the shapes I would be making if I was skiing and recreate these shapes from the clay.
The acts of connecting the clay to each other is very important and needs to be scored and have slip applied to create a bond between the different pieces of clay. These are then joined with an extra piece of thinned rolled out clay to add further support to the piece and hold it upright.
Chaos in Colour
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Glazes are a big part of my work, as they create the colour and texture to compliment my forms. The process of making glazes is fascinating changing the powder to a liquid and making the thick glaze. Glazes create a bond with the clay surface during firing and react with the heat to give you the end result you see on the work. A lot of my focus throughout my years studying have been on glaze science and testing and experimenting to create the perfect glazes with interesting textures and bright colours. I have experimented with different stains and oxides to make great end results.
I use different shades of green, blue and white and grey in my pieces as these are the colours I saw every day when I was in France. I then use some bright yellow, oranges and pinks in the gooey glazes that I blob on as these then show the colours of the night when the sun would set behind the mountains. Each extrusion has a few different glazes on so when the top glaze cracks you can see the colour underneath. I use colourful slips before bisque firing to add extra colour on them. Each glaze gets a different percentage of stain put in it to create different variations of the same colour.
Colour is a very important part of my work, before lockdown I was focusing on creating interesting texture on my work but during the lockdown period I created some pieces out of paper and expanding foam. When I created these I wanted to make some very joyful and colourful pieces and I fell in love with the colours and I wanted to try and recreate these in ceramic work. Through the use of stains and oxides I was able to create some bright colours and interesting textures to decorate my work with. Glaze experimentation was a big part of my development in my last year of university and I have enjoyed getting a better understanding of glazes and how they work and how I can improve them.
Colour represents different things to different people and each colour can reflect a mood. I make sure I have yellow in my pieces as yellow represents happiness and this will bring joy. I have blue in my work which normally means sadness but for me it represents the sky and nature and works well with the white and green shown within my work. The textures I use in my work is similar to the textures I see in nature, the cracks represent the cracks you see very often in rocks and mud and the crater glazes show texture similar to coral. I bring these together to create an interesting textured end result.
Endless The pieces I create have endless oportunities as I create pieces that can be attached and stacked against each other. I do this as I like to create pieces that are interesting from every angle and create lots of different shapes and forms. I want people to interact with my work and decide what end form them want and create it themselves by moving the pieces around. Some pieces are attached and others are singular to create lots of different shapes.
Opportunities
The creativity to decide every possibility
There is creativity in every person and this is something I want to bring out from my viewers. The texture and colours of my work are meant to spark joy and intruige in the viewer and want to create with my pieces. My work is open to interpretation and each person might see something different when they look at my work. It is immersive and invites people to play with it and build and change the shapes they see. The nature of the glazes means that they flow and drop during the firing and when I compose the end piece I try and put these in opposite positions to make it look like it is dropping the wrong way. The cracks and texture of the glaze makes the different compositions more interesting.
When I show my work I show it in nature, I want to put it back to what has inspired me to create it. The natural light shows the texture and colour to its best, artifical light would not have been able to capture the cracks as the sun does. The contrast of a brick wall and the grass create another layer to the pieces and add an element to the end sculptural affect. It has many different ways it can be showed and exhibited but back in nature seems the most natural and appropriate to me and I like the idea of putting the pieces back to what inspired me to make them.
Emily Whitworth