Unit 4 Projects

Constructing the box was not as hard as I had expected, the walls held their weight very well, and all walls except one where luckily identical in dimensions. The top of the box presented many challenges, I started by making the top lip out of very thin clay, my idea being it wouldn't warp as much under its own weight, but once the clay was dry it was very fragile and some of it ended up breaking. On every side I painted designs with underglaze, I am very proud of how I decorated my box.

My four objects are pencil cups, I got the idea from the pencil cups on top each of the tables in the classroom, and a problem I have often in my home is that I constantly misplace pencils and pens, since I don't have a designated place to put them. To make each of the cups more interesting I cut ledges of different heights in each of the cups, these ledges can be used to hold taller pencils, while ensuring shorter pencils can still be easily accessed. On two of the cups I added handles for decoration. Each cup is made of one long slab rolled in a circle for the walls, and a circular slab of clay to serve as the bottom. The hardest part was making each cup roughly the same and keeping the walls from falling in.

The masterwork I chose to sculpt was The Tower of Babel made in 1563 by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Setting into this project I knew there was a lot of complicated geometry, between pillars, arches, organic and inorganic shapes. And later I realized that the architecture of this painting and the fact it only shows one side would present big challenges. The tower couldn't be a perfect circle judging by how far back the central spire is set. With all these things in mind I set out sculpting none the less. I started with large lumps of clay, and added more sides as I needed, hollowing it out as I went, it held its structure very well even after being fully domed and hollowed, taking down the thickness of the sides was difficult because of the odd geometry but it worked.