NOTES FROM THE ARTIST

Inspired by a bowl from The Metropolitan Museum of Art gift shop, I threw this bowl that features a little island with a house on a pottery wheel. When soup is placed in the bowl, the house atop the hill in the middle will become a small island. I made this for my friend who is a soup enthusiast.

After multiple failed attempts at this form, I was able to shape the hill in the middle of the bowl. Once the clay dried, I trimmed the bowl, removing excess clay. Before placing the bowl in the kiln for its first firing, I sculpted a small house and attached it to the hill in the middle. Once pottery has gone through a kiln for the first time, the clay shrinks slightly, losing its malleability. After firing, I dipped the bowl in a dark blue glaze.

Although I ended up giving this bowl away, creating it forced me to focus my technical throwing skills like how much pressure I applied to the walls of the bowl when shaping it or the steadiness of my hands as I “pulled” the walls, moving clay from the base towards the top of the bowl to create the height.

Karina Aronson ’24