I started designing a new murrini pattern in January and thought you all might enjoy watching the on going process.
It all starts with a sketch ... this took about 4 hours.
I wanted to have it look like a ribbon falling to the bottom of the vessel. I wanted the color change to be gradual and for the flow of colors to have movement.
Here is the final sketch of the pattern without any color choices. This is the actual size the pattern will be on the finished pieces. All the measurements have been made with allowances for the shrinkage of the Southern Ice Porcelain.
This is the color shift want to achieve, so the next step is to build a murrini loaf with these colors. In order to get this look, the loaf was built from a hundred and fifty slices of colored clay.
Once the loaf is built, I cut a slice and fired it to make sure the colors were correct. This step is crucial since it would be a total waste of time to do all the work in building the murrini, only to find out the colors were off. As it happens, I did have to edit the colored loaf to cut out parts I was not happy with.
During the first week in February I created the large white and colored loaf. Once again I proved to myself that sketching a pattern with paper and pencils is a lot easier than executing the pattern with wet clay, slips and thin slices of color. It got a little crazy for a while!
The final loaf is resting now. It's never a good idea to mess with it right away.
As you can see, the outside looks terrible. I will not know what I have until I see an inside slice of it. Nightmare or lovely ... got to wait.
Today is the day though. After I finish writing this I will head in to my studio to cut into it. Images later ... if it works out!
NEXT DAY ....
Here is the loaf with a slice in front. The pattern looks backwards in the loaf, but you just have to flip the slice to get right side around.
I will be making some test vessels today to check for design and size.
To see the rest of the story, go to the MURRINIS 2 page to see these vessels being built.
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ARTIST'S STATEMENT
Today, I received an e-mail asking for my artist statement. I didn't currently have one.
Statements somehow propel otherwise sane artists into the realms of ancient Latin. They mean well but often end up describing their work in terms both off-putting and incomprehensible. Really, should you have to pull out a dictionary to understand what an artist is trying to do?
So as I explained to Rachel why I did not have one, I inadvertently wrote one.