Thursday, December 11, 2008

Leaf Panels


Walking through my garden a few weeks ago, I had an idea to make some leaf panels from leaves collected from various plants. I happened to be walking by the alder trees, Alnus rhombifolia, I planted about three years ago as young saplings. I was happy to see the trees are maturing enough to produce catkins. The white alder is a fast growing tree, up to 30 inches a year, and it can tolerate a moist soil. The alder is also a native tree and can be seen growing along streams throughout the West Coast.


I impressed the leaves and catkins into the clay surface. Later I removed the leaves and was pleasantly surprised to see the leaves had colored the clay a pale green from the chlorophyll they contained. How could I do any better than nature at capturing the subtle green of the leaves. I knew the color would burn out in the kiln, so I set about using some green under glazes to paint the leaves on the panel.


Here are a couple of other leaf panels I made. First I gathered leaves from a fern growing in a pot by the studio and impressed the leaves into clay. The fern leaves are a bit tattered from the heat of the summer, but I figured that's part of nature. For the next panel I picked some sage leaves, impressed them in porcelain clay, cut them out, and attached them to a black clay panel. Sage leaves don't grow on a branch or in a row like I have them here, but I've taken a bit of artistic license in order to utilize these leaves in the panel format. I have lots of different glazing techniques in mind for these two panels and several others I have made.


Today was the last day for this set of classes, so I've left all of the panels I made drying in a cabinet. I'll be returning to them at the end of January so there will be a slight delay in showing you what becomes of them. In the meantime, I'll be working on several other clay projects over the next several weeks, so stay tuned.

9 comments:

  1. These are very cool! I look forward to seeing them finished.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Very Nice! I love leaves and thses show lots of promise.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Judy, I can't wait to see what happens with them either, but it's going to be quite a wait for (impatient) me to get back to the cone 10 reduction kiln end of January, then bisque and then glaze beyond that. Ugh. I've really got to get this oxidation kiln going while I'm off.

    Hi Meredith, these were the panels I was telling you about which I made a while back without planning on how to hang them. I thought if worse came to worse they could be set on an easel, but that wasn't optimum, I wanted them to hang on a wall - they are about 20 inches tall and 9 inches wide. I am now hoping to use your hanging method since I think they would look better set out from the wall. Can't wait.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Linda sounds great! We put a piece of wood across the bottom on larger works. Keeps them more stable and I think it will work great on these.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Meredith, that's just what I was planning on doing with these since they are so long I want them to lie evenly rather than tilted out at the top. Thanks so much.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gorgeous Linda - I did that this year with ginkgo leaves before they all fell off the tree. I look forward to seeing how these look after being fired!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thanks Cynthia, I'm going to have quite a wait for these, I'll have to do some other clay projects to take my mind off of these leaf panels.

    I love ginkgo leaves too, (I just love the ones you use in your work) but my ginkgo tree is so scrawny and the leaves are tiny. I need to fertilize it, my soil is so poor here. I just love driving around and seeing the buttery yellow ginkgo leaves in the fall.

    ReplyDelete
  8. love um, leaves are way cool texture in clay and some glazes make them look even better!~
    Mary

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi Mary, thanks, nice to see you here. I'm hoping I can recreate some of the glazes I tried on other pieces that came out so nice. We shall see.

    ReplyDelete

I love suggestions, questions, critiques, thanks for your comment