Glazing


These are the first cartons I have glazed. Since they are porcelain, I had the choice of all the stoneware glazes.



This one is called shocking pink. I liked the gradient of pink to blue on the sample piece and James also said that on porcelain it forms little pink crystals which I thought sounded really cool. It also reminded me of corals and marine life. I chose to only dip the carton part way in the glaze to create a kind of water line, suggesting fullness and emptiness; on some level I want to represent a draining of the Earth's resources through this. I think it's also nice to have the two different surfaces, the smooth glazed half and the soft matt half. Dipping also creates a clear horizon line as if looking out across a calm sea.



I chose 'Dove' because I wanted to see if the cartons work best with subtle colours or stronger ones like shocking pink. It has a matt finish and a kind of grainy pattern. For my third carton I dipped the whole thing in 'chun clear' to see how the carton would look as a white, shiny form. Humans love shiny things, it makes us perceive things as more valuable and classy for some reason. I wonder if we are attracted to light because of our attraction to fire that we never shook off over the millions of years of evolution. Maybe our caveman brains say 'light = fire = people = safety', or we associate it with rare materials like crystals and metal. Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing these out the kiln.

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