The above article was sent to me by one of my coworkers, who somehow figured out that I'm kind of into that sort of thing ;~) At first I read through it, was suitably impressed, and went on with my day. But I never did quite shake that image of the little hollow building, all ready to be lit up - and when I had extra time today after getting the rest of my whistles ready to go, I found the decision had already been made.
In the interest of time, I used the pottery studio's roller to flatten myself some clay; without knowledge of the specific tools used to make the little church model, I was more interested in actually forming the building and the windows than the particulars of setting up the project. Along the same line, I decided early on that my building, while built after the model of the newly discovered church model, would not necessarily be a church. This goes back to my thoughts about representation in pottery: obviously, the church meant a lot to whoever made the original model, and that meaning spurred them to take the time to tackle such a project and imbue it with such delicate detail. I chose to honor that personal meaning rather than the actual object itself, and made my little lantern house with a more nature-oriented theme, as that's what holds similar meaning for me.
To be honest, I'm glad I did, because - as with all my projects so far - making the little house turned out to be more difficult than expected. Getting reasonably straight and steady walls presented an interesting challenge, but even more so did the decorations in the windows. That said, this project held an element of satisfaction that my other projects have only danced around, stemming precisely from the idea of representation. Its utilitarian purpose (to give light) added to rather than detracted from its personal purpose. I actually found myself surprised that this sort of project is not more common today in hand-building classes. We still tend to think (I say "still" because this thinking has been in place since the beginning of the nineteenth century and earlier) of civilization and technology developing in a linear fashion, each thing better than the next, each thing helping the struggle for one particular goal. While that sort of thinking has its benefits, it leaves little place or understanding for excellent, inspiring projects from the past - like the Peruvian whistling vessels, or the church model - that stand out in terms of skill and meaning, but don't serve to advance anything in particular. To me, that seems like quite a pity.
I chose to go with stars and a forested roof - constellations, I'm afraid, were a bit beyond me this time around, especially as I didn't have time to address the holes in the roof of the original. Definitely still have some things to learn about constructing these models! I'm curious about the window decorations: it would have taken quite a fine tool to cut them out of the clay, if that's how they were done (I used a needle, which was effective, but it did tend to warp the walls of the house a bit). For my side windows, I tried cutting out a hole and then adding clay back in to make a window-pane effect, and that also worked, though I imagine the addition is pretty obvious on the inside of the house - I couldn't quite reach in well enough to smooth it over on that side. The holes cut in the original do not seem to adhere to strict lines, so it seems that perhaps the idea was more important than the execution? -Of course it could also be a product of what tools were used!
No comments:
Post a Comment