15 MINUTES OR SO

Every now and again I like to take some amount of clay and make something from start to finish (well tooled and greenware) and in this case I choose 2.5lbs of the sandy stoneware clay I had recently mixed up from scratch. Truth be told, the actual time according to my clay encrusted and nearly impossible to read studio stopwatch read just shy of 22 minutes, but who is counting and here is the finished pot. The idea from this came from a machinery video on Youtube where this large square die then stepped down into a smaller, tapered square and was stamping out square copper planter liners at a billion an hour. 

I went with this idea, threw the form, squared out the top, bowl portion and rasped and stamped it for interesting texture before addressing the foot/ base. Using a wire, I roughed out the base and then rasped it to a slightly tapered conclusion before tooling out the interior. There is absolutely nothing perfect about this piece but that was not my end goal, even with the lines a little adrift, I think the idea is sound and maybe if I actually made a series and took my time, who knows how this idea may come out or morph in to something else. The bottom line is that with some classic 80s remixes playing and the bulk of my next two terra cotta kiln loads now finished and drying, it was enjoyable to just take some time to play in the clay.