Monday, January 10, 2011

Apalach Influence


This wall sculpture or plaque of St. George pine forest was influenced by the view from our campground on the island. Click back two previous posts to see the beach that inspired me. I don't call them tiles because most are bigger than tiles; this one's about 15 x 10 inches.

The campground was shaded with lots of pine trees and through the trees I could see the massive sand dunes which divide the campground from the flat area near the beach. The white dunes were barely visible and if you didn't know they were dunes you might suspect it was fog and you were no where near a beach. Except the dunes had plants occasionally poking through the mounds of sand which gave the fact they were dunes away.


Here's my first cracker house plaque, about 12 x 11 x 1 inches. Click back to the previous post to see some of the houses which inspired me. I hope to make many more, branching out into two or three dimensional ones, possibly some bas relief and some miniatures. I haven't drawn many buildings since I took India ink class during summer school in the ninth grade. I remember art was always something fun which I really liked.

I'm sorry I wasn't able to continue with those artistic pursuits back then, but, as they say, you can't go back only forward. I'm using slips colored with mason stains as my palette. I'm using B-mix now; I've had problems with it cracking before. After this batch I may get B-mix with sand to help with those issues. In the meantime, the clay is my sketch pad for these Apalach influence pieces and I am enjoying that immensely. Comments and suggestions are very welcome.
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6 comments:

  1. I love these wall plaques. Do you ad mounting hardware to them? I've tried a few ideas with my decorative plates.
    I've been using Loafer's Glory from Highwater clay. It's not cracking at ^6 and says it'll go to ^10 with no problem, you might try that.

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  2. Hi Lori, thanks, I've heard good things about loafer's glory, I may get some next week, does the color of the clay change the color of the slips? that's why I'm using the bmix, cause it's a whiter clay.

    Do a search at the top of my blog for "hanging wall tiles" to see a post i did about how i hang these, hope you post some of your plates for me to see. For plates I've used those good old fashioned plate hangers and then they can be functional and decorative too.

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  3. Hi Turquoisemoon, thanks so much.

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  4. Really liked your cracker house rendering. Aren't those houses neat?

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  5. Hi Patti, thanks, yes, my favorite ones are the ones that have no paint and are weathered. I saw one with vines growing all over it and it was returning to the earth, now how to render that one is the trick. I've been thinking about it but haven't tried it yet, one of these days.

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