My Addition to the Whisper Gallery I, In Process 2

Dreaming A Little, sculptural ceramic glaze painting, in process with the first layer of glaze

This is part II of my process for the ceramic art piece I'm making for @mrblinddraw's Whisper Gallery I. (see Part I)

To recap, The Whisper Gallery Initiative is based on the children's game "Telephone":

"A chain of artistic creations that are each initiated by a seed idea/art piece (one piece of artwork inspires the next piece, and so on). Each week we will have a featured artist who will create a piece that is inspired by the piece from the week before."@mrblinddraw

Before you do anything else, pop over to @mrblinddraw's post this morning showing the full series of collaborations created thus far. It helps to see the sequence of the 4 previous works and then mine added today.

I am the 5th artist in the series and when looking at the previous artist @voronenka ’s Flickering Light, I was inspired by the woman falling asleep while standing at the bar and who she is.

I imagined her moving between the awake and dream worlds and pieces of both her unconscious and the conscious coming together to create a scene governed by dream logic and not subject to the rules of awake time. The woman becomes the panther that she sometimes feels herself to be in her mind’s eye. As this panther-self, she is sitting outside in the balmy breeze with grasses and flowers around.

Working in ceramics I knew that the overall look of my piece would have a very different look than the previous paintings already created and I felt a certain freedom in my approach.

I began with making a small slab with a sort of frame and then added all the parts and a loose sketch of the panther. Unfortunately the first one cracked, so I made a second and in doing so had a little fun reworking the composition a bit.

I put a foundation layer of glaze down to establish some color and depth to build upon. Glaze always looks different when applied to when it comes out of the firing so it takes some knowledge of the glazes you’re working with to have any control.

After firing the foundation, I applied a second layer of glaze and fired. The plan was for this to yield the final piece which I would photograph and send to @mrblinddraw.

On Sunday when I opened the kiln I saw that the image needed more contrast and definition. It felt bland, too yellow and kind of flat so I wanted to add a little more color and “pop” to a few areas.

Since we are in the same time zone, I asked him if I could send him the image early Monday morning and he gracefully said yes. I really felt relieved to be able to push this further towards matching what’s in my mind’s eye. A “fast” firing which takes about half the time was required for me to be able to open the kiln at 6:30am.

A technical consideration worth mentioning is that typically with tiles or dishware, one doesn’t fire anything ceramic more than once because it weakens the clay and the glazes. But with a piece of art, it doesn’t have to endure the daily handling of a vessel or a tile so I could take it through a few firings. With glaze paintings I like to be able to do this so I can do a little and see what I have and they play off that some more. It’s a very enjoyable process for me but 4 firings is as many as I will do because I want my art piece to be strong enough to last through shipping, moves and the vicissitudes of life.

Early this morning I opened the kiln and here is Dreaming A Little which is 8" x 6" and is 3-dimensional in case it isn't obvious.

I spent a total of 19 hours on the piece and the materials were about $10. I like to keep an eye on the economics of art making at every stage and have found that perceived time spent is often quite different than actual, so I keep a tally as I go. A week or so after I finish a project, I always sit down and do all the math to see the breakdown of time spent, money earned, and joy/satisfaction/learning rewards.

I can’t state enough how much I enjoyed this exercise, collaboration and project and the ways it pushed me creatively were well worth the time and effort. Interestingly, my insecurities as an artist blazed brightly in the last few days of the process and thank goodness for @greyhawk who kept a clear head while I roller-coastered up and down. We are so lucky to be able to help each other in this way when either of us has lost sight of who we are as artists, or the piece we're working on, or the context of making. It works because we respect each other enough artistically to actually believe what the other says even in the midst of our worst doubts or highest ego trips!

This was an incredible exercise that turned out to be rich on many levels, thank you @mrblinddraw for inviting me to participate in your first whisper gallery!

Here is the sequence of Whisper Gallery I so far:

L to R, @upheaver, @paolobeneforti, @aksinya, @voronenka

Dreaming A Little 8" x 6", ceramic sculptural glaze painting by @natureofbeing

Follow @mrblinddraw to see progression. The next artist is @artistchristian

As always I sincerely thank you for your support, Steemit has opened up my world and I have all of you to thank for this!!