Nishida Jun

Fascinating technique of excavating from massive messy porcelain creations to get his sculptures. I'm sure J & L wouldn't mind if I did this to their kilns:

"Nishida has used a crane to "salvage" his work, and had to break the kiln door (and the kiln walls) in order to remove his creation, which had expanded during firing. In other words, Nishida's muscular physique, a remnant of his rugby days, is needed to bust open a kiln, or to shovel his way from the mess of feldspar that had leaked this way and that, almost swallowing the inside of his kiln as if some symbiotic monster. Nishida is testing the limits of his kiln, and is testing the limits of his own physical strength."

Taken from this website.

Crits and things...

Quote from my crit with Gerard Brown today regarding my frustration with working with porcelain:
"Don't give up yet. In true stalker fashion, you have to make it love you."

Something to think about while working, Richard Serra's list of verbs.

Trial and ERROR

Porcelain - you fickle creature. You got me again.

Storm King and Dia Beacon

At Storm King I loved seeing Ursala Von Rydingsvard's and Isamu Noguchi's sculptures and how they interacted with the viewer as well as how they fit into the landscape they were set in.

At Dia Beacon, my favorite piece was Richard Serra's Union of the Torus and the Sphere, which was surprising for me since I do not typically feel a connection to large steel sculptures in that way. However, it has inspired me to make some Richard Serra-esque forms that may find themselves included in a sculpture of my own.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

In our first week here, I took advantage of free admission to UArts students at the PMA. There was still a ceramics exhibition up from NCECA and I very much enjoyed Walter McConnell's unfired piece at the PMA. Check out the time elapsed video of the piece being built in the museum. I am excited for him to visit the school later this summer.

Other objects I became fascinated with at the PMA were Pate-sur-pate pieces in which porcelain slip was painted on in thin layers over a colored clay body to give a transparent and varied surface decoration to the pottery. I tried a very dumbed-down test of this and am excited to see the results after firing and figure out if the technique could be useful in some way in my own work.

ART.

Having been officially in Philadelphia for 2 weeks, I have had some great opportunities to see incredible inspiration. Since I can't figure out how to manipulate where I add photos into this blog, I will do separate posts for each of the museums.