Got some new white stoneware clay and made a bowl partly as a timeless aftertaste I’ve extracted from the Seventh Seal. Following the notion of wabi sabi while hand building the bowl, its unevenness and humanly flaws kept reminding me of this giant wobbly wooden serving bowl(and the scene with its appearance) which contained so much defining emotions and fulfilment for both the protagonist and I, I’ll consider as the most important aftertaste of the film.
Below is a b&w recording of the bowl spinning along the sound of said scene. Accompany with the trees outside my window, I’ve attempted to recreate that calmness from the movie.
I’ve tried and enjoyed using function-ware as medium to convey massages in the bigger picture project Dear diary(part of a collective magazine Common Cause Collective: Misconception, miscommunication, misunderstanding) last November in which I incooperated sculptures of daily news/casualties during the political movement in Hong Kong into porcelain rice bowls. Maybe this method is something I could do in this project as well.
Also partly as hand building practices. Being so used to throwing on electric wheel, it’s challenging but fun trying to throw manually by coiling, expanding with tools on one hand and spinning the wheel on the other, which brings me back to my root.
Throwing is one of my main practice now, but I hated it so much when I first tried it at 15 years old in high school art class. I liked clay but didn’t enjoy how confusing and uncontrollable throwing was, which now I think it’s probably because that trainee teacher wasn’t very experienced in teaching/explaining to a large crowd back then, especially when teaching both graphic design and ceramics in the same term.
Appreciating the principle of creating perfectly circular objects throwing, I would apply that on pinch-potting or coiling a vessel then shape with tools while manually spinning the hand building wheel. This video of 小水子(little water dude) is the earliest ceramic project I could find using this technique, the pot was too thick and tiny, uneven glazing, dysfunctional spout, comparing to my recent practice and the bowl I've just made, it insane to see how much my skills has grown in 4 years.
The shadow of Olivia(my plant) casted on the bowl when it’s drying next to the window. It’s so gorgeous this entire project will be a shadow play from now on.
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