Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Clay Wonderings...

My high school students want to make large ceramic sculptures.  Have you done any large clay work before? 
I'm wondering about structure and weight issues in the firing process that may be problematic. 

Do you have any ideas to share?

Do you think making a sculpture in pieces and assembling it would be better?  What would you use to hold the pieces together?

I'm not sure if this can be done, but I definitely think it would be cool if it could be!

1 comment:

  1. You posted this a while ago but still no comments so I am going to try to leave a helpful one. When I did my student teaching, the students did large scale animal heads- they looked very nice but were extremely heavy and many exploded in the kiln. You should use armatures of wire and newspaper (the newspaper will burn up in the kiln, no big deal). And make sure the students are using enough slip and have wedged the clay really well so there are no air pockets. (You probably already knew all that)

    Another thing you could do is mixed media- maybe use paper mache and clay to make something large. I visited a school that made giant elephant out of a wood armature, bubble wrap (to make him fat), paper mache, etc. It was amazing! Good luck!

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