Brian Lin
Ceramic Garden

To start processing my ceramic garden, I start of with cutting clay from a big piece with the wire cutter to get the amount of clay I need to balance form in Harmony. I prepared a canvas, tool box with various tools, and a bowl of slip that I might need for my table. After having the amount of clay, I did wedging to the clay with my hand to bend the clay to make it softer for me to design afterwards, in fact, to push the air out of the clay to make sure it doesn’t blow up in the kiln. In the kiln, it is like an oven for clay, where clay gets heated up, if you don’t know, objects expand when they are heated up, same thing to air. When air gets trapped inside the clay, they have nowhere to expand, eventually, they will crack the clay from the inside, and find their way out, which creates an explosive-like scene.

To make an ideal ceramic garden, I brainstormed ideas with unity so it demonstrates my creativity and show emphasis to differ the work between myself and others, or even show emphasis to my work compared to my very own work. I thought of making a scary garden scene in the very moment so I decided to make jack o’ lanterns to represent the theme. To conduct my process to make the jack o’ lantern, I started with a sphere, then put force from the top so both bases are kind of flat and it is like a thick cylinder with the sides like a sphere. Having the 3D pumpkin shape, I added texture to it which are lines I carved around the sides of the pumpkin in a pattern, which felt bumpy. Then I carved the facial features of the jack o’ lantern, I made them all have triangular eyes, I carved in so it is steeper than 0.5 cm, with the pointing tool first, then realized it wasn’t precise enough because the dot was too big, so I changed and used the needle tool where it is thinner and easier for me to work with. I made 3 jack o’ lanterns with different proportions, In contrast, I stacked them up from bottom to the top, biggest to smallest in order. I rotated their faces to different directions so it creates movement because of their direction they are facing, guiding the viewer’s eye. To make all 3 jack o’ lantern stand still, of course we had to do the score and slip, I spent a long time to score and made sure I had created the roughness and steepness to the surface of the clay with the scratching tool, then added some slip which made them sloppy. At this time, I have to push them together with some force, to make sure they’ve become one piece, but I had to control my force so I wouldn’t destroy their form. After having the 3 jack o’ lanterns stacked together, it looks like a snowman, but with a piece of root at the very top of the 3 jack o’ lanterns, which in this case is the smallest one. What I did to the root was the same process of score and slip, but in smaller area I scored and smaller area I slipped, my 3 stacked up jack o’ lantern was completed in unity, but I continued to spray water on them consistently to make sure it doesn’t dry so fast in order to avoid further changes afterwards.

I wanted to make a treehouse with a door at its trunk, and some windows in the upper part of the trunk, so the basic knowledge of my idea was not to make a house on top of the tree, but making the whole tree as a house, where there is a room inside, by the entrance to the tree trunk. However, my thoughts changed as I tried making the tree trunk by cutting another chunk of clay with the wire cutter. This time, same process in the beginning, I did wedging and created a slab into a rectangular shape, wanting it to be more like a cylinder shape, I continued doing my slabbing, which did not turn out good. So, I started to coil my clay on the canvas, required rhythm in doing this skill or the shape will look weird, which made a strong cylinder shape. I started to add texture on the sides of the cylinder, to make it more like a natural trunk, some fingerprints which made them look like bumps. I do not want to make branches and leaves at this point, I wanted to make a simple rooftop to cover its top. I started with another piece of clay. I started to slab again, until it turns out into a pizza shape, already with texture on it, with curiosity, I placed the flat circular clab on top of my trunk, this is where my idea started to change, it looks perfectly like a mushroom… a giant one! I took the “mushroom” top down, it’s not a rooftop anymore, it is a “cap”, scientific word for mushroom’s upper part. So, I took it down and starting to add more textures onto it, to make it smoother, but bumpy by texture, so it’s basically smooth on the bumpy. After that, I slabbed the base of the stem of the mushroom to make a flat surface so it could stand on its own. I scored and slipped the stem to the cap, which was a real success, then made another long thin coil and sticked it around the edges of the place where I scored and slipped, I guess it made it more stabilized. With the same process, I made another mushroom, with a bigger cap! After all three of my works turned out well, I grooved the stem of both mushrooms with rhythm so it looks like a steep hole with patterns of digging lines from the side. From the bottom, but doesn’t affect the appearance of the mushroom when placed on a flat surface. The purpose of doing this action is to make it dry faster, and have a less risk of experiencing the clay to crack or explode.

The final object I made was a R.I.P. grave with my name carved on it. I had a small piece of clay, made it into a rectangular slab, then smoothen the top to make it curve like an arc. Then carved my name and the R.I.P symbol with the needle tool.

I enjoyed most of this unit when smoothening up the surface of clay with water, and creating texture, which I demonstrated both skills most in creating the mushroom. The mushroom made it easy for me because it was big, and not small which will make it somehow hard and confusing like the jack o’ lantern when carving their facial features. I demonstrated a lot of knowledge in score and slip, I understand how the skill works and tried my best to conduct and make it work out, eventually, it did. The space I created in placing my objects: mushrooms, jack o’ lantern, R.I.P grave could be random, because I didn’t create a base for them to stick on, which is not required also. Overall, I liked working on clay, I think I developed a lot from 6th grade onto now, where I have more understanding and knowledge.