/* Pinterest website claiming thingie */ /* That's it for the pinterest thingie */ Aberrant Ceramics: August 2012

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Aberrant Ceramics is the artwork of Aaron Nosheny,
ceramic artist and potter in Tucson, Arizona.

I work in the medium of stoneware clay and make hand-built pottery, sculpture, hamsas, ornaments, masks, and a variety of other forms.

I’m a self-taught autistic artist working in my medium for over twenty years. I like monsters, insects, weird animals, body horror, folk horror, horror comedy, horror in general, Halloween decorations, fast food mascots, kitsch – all of these creep into my work, but there’s really no overarching theme.

I am in love with my medium. I love the process of frantically birthing clay monstrosities, subjecting them to an epic trial by fire, and sending them out into the world.



Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Gargoyle Statue

I have a commission of a gargoyle from the most generous of my patrons.  I used a souvenir gargoyle statue from Notre Dame in Paris as a model.  I haven't been there.






This is the souvenir statue used as a model.  It has a candle holder between the wings.  I didn't copy the candle holder, but I was wishing that I had because I thought it would make it more stable.  However, the piece has survived and I think it looks better without the candle holder.


This is the actual statue that it's based on.




Sunday, August 26, 2012

Mog Head

This is a clay interpretation of a page from the book Mog the Forgetful Cat by Judith Kerr.  The text that goes with illustration is:

The garden was dark.
The house was dark, too.
Mog sat in the dark
and thought dark thoughts.

Chamsa 68

This is a chamsa with a blue flame design.


Unfired Five-Cat Column

I have a tradition of making cat columns, partially in homage to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat and partially because I'm not good at making bodies.  Usually the columns consist of several nested clay cups with a head perched on top.  This one is a column composed of cat heads.  They heads are not very realistic.  They're more like clay interpretations of cartoon cat heads as drawn by a non-artistically talented four year old who watches too much TV.




After the addition of the smallest and topmost cat head, the column was leaning slightly backwards.  I attempted to remedy this by removing some clay from the back side of the column.  Instead, this made the column weaker and it didn't look like it was going to stand on its own.  I added several more circular bases underneath the original base and so far, it's holding.


Saturday, August 25, 2012

Yak-Face Pot

This is a tall coil pot with the collaged/sculpted features of an obscure Star Wars character.  It's Saelt-Marae, also known as Yak Face, although he looks more like a camel than a yak.  The character had about two seconds of screen time in Return of the Jedi.  He had another scene in which he has a brawl with another rubber-mask character (the three-eyed goat-like creature Ree-Yees), but it was cut.  The character gained infamy when its Kenner action figure was only produced in limited quantities and not released in the U.S. at all.  Otherwise, he's just another ugly face in Jabba's palace.





The Yak Face Pot is actually a vessel.  It's food safe and theoretically microwave safe, dishwasher safe, and oven safe.  It could be used as a chalice on some celebratory occasion.



Saelt-Marae in Return of the Jedi:


Thursday, August 23, 2012

Coin-like Objects


Gamorrean Coin



Coins made with Masters of the Universe figures.  The faces have a low level of detail and don't make very good molds.  They clearly weren't made with that purpose in mind.



Two coins made with skeleton parts.



Wiseman Coin:


Monday, August 20, 2012

$37 Sale

I sold $37 worth of clay objects at the studio gallery.

The four objects are: Space Coyote 1, the Charles Crumb Coyboy, Green Devil, and Chamsa 50.


Sunday, August 19, 2012

Unfired Mog Objects

This is part of a project to create objects based on illustrations from Mog the Forgetful Cat by Judith Kerr.  For the one-year-old nephew.  So he can break them.



Jade Chamsas

These are four jade green chamsas made as a commission.  The commission is actually only for one, but I made four so as to offer multiple options.





Yak Face in Carbonite

This is a mold of a Yak Face (Saelt-Marae) figure.  The face is another deep mold that didn't turn out too well.


Miscellaneous Mold Objects

Tree Object






Pine Cone Texture Objects






Inverted Pentagram Object






Wolf Objects

As part of my regular pilgrimages to R-Galaxy in Tucson, I bought a plastic wolf figure from the $0.25 bin.  The mold images are flawed.  Molds of "deep face" don't turn out that well.  I'm working on a way to make the mold in two pieces so that the deep part (the muzzle) doesn't come out so distorted.



Thrift Caroler Objects

These are clay objects made with a mold of a caroler candle holder object purchased at a thrift store.






Here is the original object.





Someone insinuated that these objects were anomalously benign for me.  I don't know whether to feel insulted or pleased, but I don't think this figure looks benign at all.  Religious raptures creep me out.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Eleven-Eyed Pot

This is a coil pot with eleven molded eyes.




Saturday, August 11, 2012

Brain Column

I used to make a lot of "column sculptures," consisting of a sculpted head attached to a column made of nested clay cups.  This piece was an experiment to see if I was still capable of making column sculptures.  I intended to make a cat column and ended up with this monstrosity.



Here are some of my old columns from 2008.


Unfired Gargoyle

This is a sculpture based on a souvenir gargoyle statue of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  I like how it came out and I hope it survives, but it's a commission and I can't imagine how it would survive being shipped.





Thursday, August 2, 2012

Winged IG-88 Menorah 2

This is my third IG-88 Menorah and the second to show the assassin droid with wings.
Here are the other two:  
IG-88 Menorah 2






This is a view from above, showing the holes for the candles.  This menorah was constructed while the clay slabs were a little too soft.  Some of the pieces are warped and the slabs don't fit together that well.



Spare Eyes

These were left over from the Eyeball Pot and I couldn't let two perfectly good eyes go to waste.


Here they are adorning some random samples from my library:

Chamsa 71