Ceramics: Tea Sets and Masks

It's taken us a while, but our first three projects in my ceramics electives have finally been finished up.  We started off the year with pinch pot tea cups, moved to coil tea pots (to make a set), and then we did slab masks.  This covered the three basic hand-building skills and of course, wedging and scoring and slipping.

I am doing my best to make my assignments as open ended as possible.  I mentioned in my previous post that I am moving towards TAB in my elementary room, and I'm also experimenting with it a bit in the high school room.  Now, the electives are a bit harder to leave open ended in terms of choice of material, so I am doing my best to make the assignments as open ended as possible.  In the beginning, it was sort of hard to think up assignments that are open-ended, but it's getting easier and easier as we go.

To make our slab masks, I gave students a variety of mask forms to choose from to slump their slabs over.  They were required to give their mask a theme, and to think about texture.  The lion mask above?  That right there is the first 100 I've ever given on an assignment!  The pictures literally give it no justice.  I'm loving that my students are thinking outside the box, too, with their surface decoration.  Our district's mascot is a cougar, so one of my volleyball players made a cougar mask and meticulously glued in fishing twine to the whisker holes she made.  It literally took her 2 1/2 class periods to hot glue those babies into the holes.  So awesome!

\

The tea cups and tea pots were two separate assignments but they had to go together.  Students were required to make four identical shaped tea cups (though surface decoration could vary a bit based on the theme).

I've got more to come after this!  Our current two projects that are being finished up are ceramic shoes (life size!) and chia pets. :)

3rd Grade: Mondrian Unit (Part 3): Glazing Our Cubes

On Friday, my last class of 3rd graders glazed their cubes.  This process took a total of two class periods to complete.  I pulled out my tubes of Spectrum Raised Accent colors in black (of which I received when I ordered the Nasco Spectrum Tile kit last year).  I instructed students to paint over their carved lines with the black glaze, and then to paint in their squares.  When one side was finished, they rotated the cube and did the next side.  

If you remember from my first post in this series, students were able to choose from four different color families to design their cube...they didn't have to do just primary colors.  I set up four stations at my tables...one for each color family (primary, secondary, warm and cool), with two different glazes for each color.

One class's glazed cubes!  These were all loaded into the kiln and fired on Friday, just in the nick of time for art show set-up on Monday of next week!!!  I can't wait to get to school Monday morning to see them!  

And of course in my haste to get them loaded in the kiln 2nd period, I forgot to load my cube!!!

Part 1: Introduction to Mondrian & Color Theory Review

Part 2: Clay Cube Tutorial

Part 4:  Finished Cubes Coming soon!

Studio Art: Coil Pots

This coil pot project was the last project in my Studio Art ceramics unit.  These have finally all been finished up and glazed fired.  For this project, students were required to make a simple vessel.  It did not have to hold liquid.  What they did have to show was movement through the vessel through the use of their coils.  Some did a really awesome job showing movement, while others didn't seem to understand.  Next year, if I repeat this project, I feel I will have to do a better job explaining movement.

Students used plain coils, spiraled coils, braids, and many other coil techniques to create these.

Love this one!  One of the best ones1

The one on the left has an awesome variety of coils!  No so much movement, but definitely creativity in the types of coils that were used.

The brown glaze with the blue specks is amazing on this piece!  I only wish this person would have coordinated the rest of their glaze choices to match that glaze a little better...

After I sit back and review these pieces, I see a need for me to better teach color choice.  As far as I can tell, these students haven't really had much training on color theory.  My current elementary curriculum teaches basic color theory in kindergarten (primary and secondary colors), reviews it in places as they move up, and touches very heavily on it in 5th grade, so hopefully my current students will have a better ability to choose colors as they move up.  As I look forward into next year, I think that I will incorporate a color theory unit early on in the school year, perhaps during my first unit of "What is Art?".

6th Grade: Ceramic Greek Columns

Here is this year's Ancient Greek projects for my 6th graders.  I did this project two years ago and it was a huge success.  Unfortunately, this year they aren't turning out as great as the first time I did them...and it's through no fault of the students!  It really stinks only having elementary students once every six days!  There is no possible way to keep clay projects wet enough in that 8 day period in between classes (because the weekends add even more time) to allow students two days to work with wet clay. 

All things considering, they did a great job constructing these in a short amount of time, especially since I gave the demo all in the same class!  I tried to cut down on time for them by having slabs pre-rolled using my slab roller instead of having the students roll their own slabs.  Elementary students tend to take a longer time to roll out their own slabs.  Most students also chose to do Ionic and Doric columns...very few Corinthian. 

When I look at the quality of work I was able to get done in the last three years and then compare it to artwork from this year, it makes me a little sad!  If I had my way, I would be 5th-12th grade art so I could really enjoy those students...those are really my favorite grade levels (well, sometimes minus the 7th graders).  My 6th grade curriculum is BY FAR my favorite curriculum...anything that combines art and history makes me giddy with excitement!

I am currently in the process of firing the columns from this year's 6th graders, but I figured that I would share some of the columns from this project when I did it two years ago.  Students had two days to work in wet clay to score and slip, and then a third day to fine tune and smooth out their project.  We then glazed them with clear glaze, and some opted to add a little bit of a green to give it a mossy look.  I will share this years' projects once they are completed!

Finished Slump/Hump Mold Projects

Would you believe that we only have two more weeks in our third quarter in my district?!  Where the heck has time gone this year...with everything that has been going on in my life this year, I feel like things have been and are passing in a blur!  Either way, I finally have gotten just about all of our ceramic projects fired in from my ceramics unit in Studio Art.  I have one more firing to go, which I will do tomorrow.  Here are some of our finished slump/hump mold projects we did in Studio Art.  Students were able to choose between glazing, painting with acrylic, or using both to finish their ceramics projects.

I think this mask is my favorite!  The glaze choices were awesome and all around was an all-around excellent job!

This one came in close second...Again, the glaze job on the cards was great and it was an interesting theme choice.  The student glazed everything but the poker chips at the bottom and the money on top.  The rest was painted with acrylic.

Two masks with excellent paint jobs.  These students opted for acrylic paint instead of glaze.

An interesting take on a bowl...loved this one!

This was a very detailed bowl by a student who is very into sports...ah, one place where sports and art got along!

A bit of a creepy mask in my opinion...but interesting none the less, especially that the nose survived!

The following is the rubric I created to grade any finished ceramic project.  I did one grade for the constructed mask itself before it went into the kiln (just in case we had an unexpected explosions) and then I did a grade for the finished product, whether it was glazed, painted or both.

Finished Non-Objective Pinch Pot Spheres

I'm so sorry that I haven't been posting lately!  This year just doesn't seem to be my family's year...Over the last month, my husband and I have been dealing with a diagnosis of testicular cancer.  Currently, he will be starting a 9 week chemo regimen to get rid of this horrible disease.  I have already lost sick time from my maternity leave but still need to be there to take care of him, so unfortunately, my posts will once again become far and few, if not stop, for the next couple of months.  

In the mean time, here are some of the finished pinch pot spheres from my Studio class.  This was actually the 2nd project in their ceramic unit, however next year, I would probably do this one first, the coil project second, and the slab project last.  Currently, students are glazing their coil pots and I just need to finish photographing their glazed slump/hump projects to share.

These spheres were glazed using Amaco's Opalescent glazes.  These glazes aren't necessarily meant for red glazes only, but they tend to have a cool effect if applied correctly to red bisqueware.  I couldn't find my Artist's Choice glazes (which are meant for red clay) to use so I went with these alternative glazes, which turned out pretty cool anyways.

In the future, I feel as if this project would definitely be better served as the first project in the ceramics unit not only because it's the easier hand-building skill, but because it would also be a good way to show students how glaze application affects the final outcome of the piece.  Next time, I would probably have students section off their design somehow and glaze each section differently: one layer, two layers, three layers, and a very sparse, splotchy layer.

Studio Art: Ceramic Unit Part 2: Pinch

In hindsight, I supposed I probably should have done this project before the slab project...next year.  For this project, I was first looking for perfection.  I know, I know...perfection in art class?  For this, it was doable and every single student succeeded in my opinion!  For this two-part sphere challenge, students were asked to create the most perfect sphere out of two pinch pots.

The first step was to make two pinch pots of about the same size and score and slip them together.

Next, students used a ruler to slap and shape their hollow ball of clay.

Some rolled their spheres on the table to help smooth the surface, others used a wooden rib tool to scrape and smooth the edge.  I did not encourage the use of an elephant ear sponge and water to smooth the spheres.  The only students who used that as an option were students whose clay started to crack towards the end.

 Once everyone completed their spheres...we invited the administrators into the classroom to judge them.  This is the challenge part.  I offered, to the winner, the choice of being able to opt out of a quiz, a homework assignment or for me to buy them a king size candy bar.  Amazingly, I think both winners opted for the candy bar!  Since all of the students did such an awesome job, I did buy some bags of candy and planned on giving them a free day before February break (of which we ended up having a snow day...go figure!).

Students lined up their spheres on a number so the administrators could pick the winner from each class.

The "part-two" of this project is this: students had to carve a non-objective line design into the surface of their sphere.  We will glaze these using the glazes I have specifically for red clay. ***It's also really important to note that before these were set out to dry, students had to poke at least one hole with a needle tool through the surface of the sphere.  This way, the air inside as a route to escape so the spheres don't all blow up in the kiln!***

Part three of the ceramic unit has not been started yet...upon return from February break, students will glaze these projects for firing and then we will work on the last project of the ceramics unit, coils!