Christy Keeney's visit

Working on a clay in the mould

Christy Keeney came to the college for most of the week starting 26th March. On Monday he spoke about the changes in his work as well as things that had influenced his work. His style has changed quite a lot since he was a student here. With photos he showed us some of the processes he used in making his pieces.

Scouring the edge of the clay

Putting slip on the edge of the clay

Taking off the mould

Working on the shape of the hair

Keeney also gave a demonstration. He made one of his heads in the classroom as an example of how we could make ours. I got plenty of photos of the demonstration. It was very interesting. As he made the whole piece so quickly he had to use a heating tool to stiffen up the clay.

He used a mould to made the base of his figure, we wouldn't be able to make our head the same way as there was only one of these. Using the slab roller, two large slabs of clay were rolled out and placed on each side of the mould. They were firmly pressed in place. The edges were scored and slipped before they were put together.

Adding the finishing touches

Experimenting with the hand

All that was left was to build up the shape of the hair, add features and finish it off. Keeney also, at the request of the tutor, experimented with adding a hand but I think he left it off in the end.

Start of Ceramics

So I got into ceramics which was my first choice. I was really happy with that. My second choice was sculpture.
For the first week the class was divided into group of about five people each. In our groups we were ask to solve the problem: 'To explore the breadth of Ceramics in 2012 as suggested by the Pot, Vessel, Object.' My group decided to look mainly at the history of ceramics by Continent. We divided the subjects up between us, with some we all looked at. I researched Asia my self. The day before presenting our work the tutors spoke to us. They pointed out that problem was on ceramics in 2012. As a group we hadn't really noticed that and had to do some last minute planning to refocus the research. We decided to each pick a current artist working with ceramics, get images and information on them and present this on a page.

Even though I was one of two from the group that had gotten the job of speaker in the end each person spoke about the artist they had researched. This was mainly due to the lack of preparation time there ended up being. I think we worked well as a team and I definitely wouldn't mind work with them again.
Week two we began looking at our big project under the heading 'Narrative'. Each person was to choose a title of a book, a line of a poem or song, or something else with narrative possibility. By the end of the week it was decided that it might be easier if each person choose a word from a list provided to us. I had already found a book title which I wanted to use so I stuck with it. It is 'The Gods And Their Machines'.