Elemental Heirlooms Project
This post will track my creative process
through a new ceramics project.
Elemental Heirlooms
I’d like to create a collection of artifacts based on these eight elemental concepts:
Void, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water, Wood, Air, Light
I will explore terra cotta and stoneware, and perhaps white stoneware and porcelain as well. I would like to get more familiar with all the types of clay.
Then I will work on a mode of presentation that suggests family heirlooms and/or reliquaries, which may include other materials.
I plan on creating a collection of eight sculptural objects for each of the eight elements, so there would be 64 objects in total.
They each would be able to be held in the hand. (Sized like the balls shown in the images.)
Each element will have its own color: void, black; fire, red; metal, orange; earth, yellow; water, blue; wood, green; air, violet; light, white.
I have not found glazes that create the colors I want as of yet, so it may be that I will be painting these pieces afterwards with other media. I would love some guidance on that.
these pieces will be a part of a larger installation type presentation, so I may add other ceramic elements to the whole presentation as I go. I would love to learn how to make a larger vessel, throne, and or hand built. Perhaps I will make one larger vessel for each element as well. I am not sure how much time this will take so I am just guessing here.
Inspiration:
reliquary caskets, alchemical athanor furnace
Other Inspiration:
yinyang symbol, Platonic solids, color wheel, alchemical diagrams, early 20thC abstract art
