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Final Pieces

While the clay was leather hard, before firing, I had carved holes for nails to be easily inserted, so installation was pretty easy. Each light was stuck on with Velcro with a square of transparent coloured foil folded over it. I love how the lights highlight the cut out drips and spread across the wall.

I didn’t end up dripping the wax on the holy water stouts for 2 reasons. For one, I didn’t think it made a lot of sense for there to be wax on them and for two I really liked the feeling of the dips along the back of the pieces that follow the drips, it’s quite a satisfying smooth texture.

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Dripping Wax

This was my setup for dripping the wax on my ceramic candles. I waited for the candles to form pools of melted wax around the wicks, then gently tipped them on the sides of each cylinder.

The candles were not very pigmented so it took a while to build up the wax to a point I was happy with.

Some of the wax got burnt in the flame before it dropped onto the cylinders, leaving little black spots on some of the cylinders. I thought this was an interesting look so I intentionally added more on some of the affected pieces.

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Artist Research: Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin was an American abstract sculptor. He used commercially available fluorescent light tubes to create his pieces. He referred to his earliest pieces working with light as a medium as ‘icons’ in reference to Russian Orthodox icon paintings.

Flavin studied to be a priest for 5 years and continued to reference his Catholic background throughout his life, including creating an installation inside of the church of Chiesa Rossa in Milan. This untitled installations design was completed only 2 days before Flavins death in 1996.

The colour choice and order of blue, red and yellow is thought to represent night, dawn and day.

In my dripping candles wall hanging, I was going to insert small LED lights to glow from within the cylinders. I thought after looking at the stained glass windows in the St John’s cathedral and peeking at Flavins work, it could look really pretty if the lights were multi coloured using transparent coloured foil.

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Plans After Firing

This is what the pieces look like fired. I plan to do the same with both projects and use the transparent glaze.

Before glazing the stouts, I used sandpaper to clean up some of the messy edges and corners.

There is some slight streaking of red on some of the double ended candles due to the remnants of terracotta on the extruder, however I thought after I dropped the colourful wax down and up both ends, they would be negligible.

I debated on using white glaze on the candles, but after comparing samples, I thought the clear glaze on white clay looked more like natural wax rather than the stark white.

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Dripping Holy Water Stout

I originally planned to make only 1 holy water stout inspired wall mount but I thought it could look interesting to have 2 side by side, one upside down.

I wanted the decoration to be simpler than my heirloom stout, with a dripping pattern to sort of represent religious items slowly dripping and melting into the ownership of non religious households.

I started by creating a pinch pot. While it dried, I rolled out a slab.

Once the pinch pot had dried a little, I cut it in half and lined one half up on the slab. I cut around the curve of the bowl and two parallel lines up from the edges. I also used slip to stick the half bowl to the backing.

I love the shell like ridges on the original stout, so I used the extruder to make some wiggly ridges on the bowl. For the backing, I cut a dripping shape in recess for the one that will be upright.

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Remnants of Religion in Non-religious Households

This holy water stoup is a family heirloom, likely bought by one of my ultra Catholic ancestors at the Eucharist Congress in Amsterdam in 1924. I love the delicate plant details that frames the picture in the centre and leads up to the crest of Amsterdam.

There’s a little bit of uncertainty with the previous home of the stoup. It was either in my dads family home in Breda and belonged to my Opa or was in my great Aunties home in Tilburg. Either way, it now sits in our display cabinet in Dublin.

For this part of my project, I wanted to look at specific religious artefacts and how they become a part of a homes landscape, even when the household is non religious. The uncertainty about the placement of the holy water stoup and the great condition of this almost 100 year old item is an example of this. The piece didn’t and doesn’t hold as much spiritual significance for the owners, but is still being treated with care and tenderness.

These little 12 Apostle spoons used to be in my great Aunties house as well. Another heirloom. My dad has fond memories of these little spoons as my Aunts would let him use one in his coffee when he visited.

My older brother remembers playing and organising them when he was younger. They’re very attractive for children’s imagination because of the detailed tiny figures on the top of each spoons handle.

I know that at least my great Aunty Agnes didn’t identify as religious later in life, as I had asked her about it during an interview I did with her in primary school.

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Double Ended Candle Installation Designs and Using The Extruder

To be more representative of candles, I started using the large cylindrical extruder to make the varying sizes. I then cut melting/ dripping shapes on either end of the cylinders.

The first design/arrangement I came up with for the double ended candles would be a chandelier and would involve a wooden wheel and some kind of chain or wire to suspend the structure from the ceiling.

The next design that I ended up going with involved the candles nailed to a wall in size order. Each candle would have colourful real wax dripping either way and a little light that would glow from inside.

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Artist Research: Philip Eglin

Philip Eglin is an English ceramics artist. He made this ceramic seated priest in reference to the child sexual abuse scandals involving a variety of powerful figures in the Catholic Church. The priest seems to sit peacefully in stark contrast to the crude illustrations scrawled across his body.

Some of the images reference the banquet of Chestnuts (1501), in which there was a competition amongst the attendees to see who could perform the most sex acts with the hired courtisanes. Amongst the attendees were several high ranking members of the Catholic Church, highlighting the contradictions of the institution.

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Burning the Candle at Both Ends

Burning the candle at both ends is a phrase that means when a person overextends themself, or trys to do too much in a short period of time.

I wanted to relate prayer candles in churches to the biblical concept of labour being holy (Psalm 90:17, Proverbs 16:3 & 21:25) with a touch of American traditional tattoo culture, as a double ended candle is a popular tattoo design. I thought the mix of biblical concepts and tattoo culture would be contradictory, as tattoos are explicitly discouraged (Leviticus 19:28) much like how the institution of the Catholic Church often directly contradicts what is written in the Bible.

I still like the idea of pieces being repeated in increasing sizes to represent sound spreading. I at first thought the candles would be solid forms, and be quite literal imitations of actual candles with wicks, flames and dripping wax. However, after making some small samples, I decided I wanted the pieces to be more representational of actual candles.

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Primary Research: Sounds in a church

I went on a little expedition to St John’s Cathedral to get some footage. I managed to get there in time to hear the church bells from the inside.

There was one other person in the church while I was there, a woman praying. She was humming as she prayed but I didn’t feel it appropriate to record her. It was a lovely sound though, so quiet but it still managed to resonate.

I always liked the little prayer candle stands when I was a child. I thought the little candles looked so neat all lined up and melting, showing the time it’s been since the individual lit their candle.

The massive organ above the door was quite a sight. It’s unfortunately rarely played for non occasion days.

I hadn’t realised how large and colourful the stained glass windows were, I hardly noticed them from outside but the glow from inside is so vibrant.

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Ceramic instruments: Udu

The udu drum is a Nigerian percussion instrument, played by hitting any part of the drum with the palm or fingertips. When looking at ceramic instruments, the two most popular seem to be the udu and the ocarina.

I made my udu by fusing 2 pinch pots, prodding two holes in the sphere with a corer And attaching a small tube over one of the holes. I made one because I wanted to see what was possible for having clay make sounds. While I think my udu was semi successful, I think the sound is more like a water droplet, which I don’t think is related to my project enough to incorporate into my project any further.

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Senses project: mind map and sketches

I wanted to do sounds in a church for the senses project. I mainly thought about the echoing resonance in larger cathedrals and how even if the space is empty, we still feel the need to whisper.

I liked the idea of doing repeated pieces gradually getting larger, to sort of represent how sound waves spread and bounce within a space while still maintaining the original sound.

I had an idea of doing some hollow, ghostly floating monks hoods. I thought if I made their bodies a bell shape, there would be a possibility of them actually making some sound.

I drew them holding little candles, which got me thinking about interesting ways I could represent sound waves. I had recently learnt about and how to use the extruder, which I thought could be used to make round repeating structures that would get wider from the base, like how sound waves spread in a space.

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Wearable/Unwearable Project Part 2: Installation

As a group, we went on a walk around campus to scout for possible installation spaces. Because of both the weather and the fragility of some of the pieces, if we were to display our piece outside, it would only be for a limited time. So we ultimately decided to display it indoors.

We decided to suspend our necklace from the pillars in the main reception of the college. It’s a space with heavy foot traffic and the natural light would nicely illuminate the piece.

One concern we identified was the weight of the collective beads pressing down on the beads closer to the centre, so we used small pieces of cylindrical foam as buffers in between.

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Wearable/Unwearable Project part 1: Making the Beads

For the first 2 weeks of the ceramics elective, we worked on a collaborative project dubbed ‘Wearable/Unwearable’. The idea was that we’d individually make multiple large beads that would eventually be placed together to make one collective wearable/unwearable piece.

To prepare for the project, we were asked to take 10 pictures from nature for our beads to be inspired by. I found myself to be leaning towards spiky pointed forms like thorns and tapered leaves and soft round shapes like berries.

During the first couple of days, we learnt multiple new techniques to aid us in making our beads including pinch pots and different smoothing techniques.

The first bead I made has a shell like shape. I started by using the extruder to make long triangular forms. I was thinking of the succulent in my room while making it, so originally the triangular prisms were gonna drape off the bead at the end, but I quite liked how they looked wrapped around the bead instead. This was before I learned how to smooth the clay nicely by scoring them and smoothing with a flexible plastic piece, so the finished piece was for more messier than I would have liked.

I made a more literal berry bead. The leaves were made by pressing the clay into plaster casts of bark. The berry stems ended up being quite fragile when fired.

This bead was by far my favourite. I was thinking of how cake decorators make flowers by piping petals in a circle in layered succession. I thought the result ended up looking like a leak with the stem cut off.

This was the only piece I had fired at the higher temperature, and I much preferred how it looked compared to the lighter orange colour. I also loved the naturally occurring iron that raised to the surface during the firing process, it gave a lovely texture and speckled look.

This bead is covered in small pyramids made by pressing the clay in plaster casts of cardboard packaging. Along with the shell bead, the result is quite messy looking in my opinion, but the process was quite satisfying.

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Movement Statement

Chosen Electives: Ceramics, Sculpture, Printmaking

For the Movement project, I really focused on ballet legs and marionette dolls. On my original mind map, I had dance/performance as one of the direct links from the centre of movement. I knew when I wrote that down I wanted to involve some element of puppetry, as it’s a medium of art that involves active motion as a part of the piece. As for ballet dancing, I really enjoy the romantic drama of a lot of well known ballets like Giselle, which I used for secondary research.

I did try and force ‘progression’ in the project, when I started involving swans. Even though this didn’t feel natural to me, I thought it was expected of me to sort of move on from my original concept. I’ve since realised that exploring a single concept is well worth the time, rather than forcing yourself to move on.

Printmaking: During the printmaking elective weeks, I focused on creating patterns relevant to my concept. As my only 2D elective, I took the time to create graphic images, as I wouldn’t have this opportunity in my other 2 chosen electives.

I loved the speed at which one could get results when making prints. It created more room for exploring shapes and formats.

My favourite thing that I made during this time was the ballet feet stamp. I really enjoyed the look of them lined up neatly like a row of dancers preparing to glide on stage.

Sculpture: the sculpture elective was definitely my weakest point, which was quite surprising for me as I originally thought that I would be studying it for the next 3 years.

With the idea development workshop at the beginning of the week, we took the time to write down verbs that came to mind when thinking about the movement project. I came up with words like to tie and to knot. I started to involve the dents and impressions made in skin by clothes, specifically pointe shoe ties.

I think it was my weakest point because I ended up being very frustrated with the openness of the course overall, which, again, surprised me. I thought being able to use any material at any scale would be exciting but I found the prospect of actually doing that quite jarring. It just didn’t end up being for me.

Ceramics: Ceramics quickly became my number 1 choice during this process. I loved experimenting with what was possible in the kiln and finding how prevalent ceramics are in daily life.

I made my marionette legs with the lighter clay we had readily available so that they would have an almost porcelain look once glazed. I made 2 sets of marionette legs as the first set didn’t go quite according to plan. I didn’t take into account how clay shrinks when fired so the holes I made for the pins on my rosary beads were too small.

I think in terms of sustainability, it was easiest to fit it into ceramics. I was really happy to find out that any clay that had dried out was able to be recycled and used over and over again. After only a short few months in art college, I quickly found out the sheer amount of work you produce that either doesn’t turn out the way you wanted or just gets thrown out. It was great to see that the material we used and explored with was never put to waste. Many of the tools we used were also pieces of twigs, old twine and rubbish. I also found damaged trinkets in my local antique shop which I inserted into my ceramics pieces in various ways.

It was definitely a learning process, adjusting my expectations, becoming comfortable with stumbling. It was so new to me the idea of trusting a powerful machine with your work and not being 100% sure what was going to come out the other side. But it was so incredibly rewarding when thinks came out exactly or better than expected.

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Ball Jointed Leg

Like I mentioned in my previous post, I needed to use a different method of attaching each piece of the leg while still being mobile. I started by moulding the thigh, calf and arched foot. I tried to include some flexed muscle definition for a bit of extra detail. I then made the knee and ankle joints to fit into the dips I made at the end of each piece. While making the joints, I rolled in my glass peddles. I thought the cracked glass look would sort of symbolise the enormous pressure and strain put on the human body in a sport like ballet.

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Kilkenny Trip: Land/Marks

On Tuesday the 28th of February, the ceramics department ran a school trip to the National Design & Craft Gallery in Kilkenny. It was really interesting to see a gallery display the prices for each piece, I think it was beneficial to see how individual artists value their work.

We also had a look around some gift boutiques in the area with ceramic pieces for commercial sale.