Fetus and Amoeba

I had an idea to make the Major Arcana of Timothy Leary's tarot deck using clay figures.  These are for the card numbered zero, The Fool.

Metachamsas Set 4

I spent a lot of time world building when I was a child, sometimes in the context of games like Dungeons & Dragons, but more often by myself, in my head and on paper. I like the shape of these objects formed from the outline of a "chamsa" hand because they resemble a character from one of these worlds. The black glaze came out matte instead of glossy. I thought it might have been due to an error in kiln temperature so I had them glaze fired again, but they came out the same. I'm guessing the glaze was contaminated.

This group of numbered metachamsas were intended to be part of a clock.

This group includes a few rejects from the clock metachamsas as well as various other experiments.

Nothing Exploded

I finally accumulated enough new work to justify reserving a kiln.  I candled it overnight at a low temperature and then turned it up every two hours until it was at its highest setting.  I wasn't entirely sure I had done the whole process correctly and wasn't sure what I was going to find when I opened the kiln 24 hours later.

Nothing exploded and there were no unpleasant surprises.  I actually only had four large pieces and a number of smaller objects to fire.  The rest is other people's work, which also happily survived the firing.  Disclaimer:  the cross and the heart are not my work.

Chamsas 96 and 97

These chamsas are colored with a glaze called Pussywillow which shows up as a light matte blue when applied lightly and a darker, slightly glossy blue when applied more heavily.  It doesn't show that well in the photos.

Chamsa 96 (6 inches long)

 Chamsa 97 (10.5 inches long)

Chamsas 96 and 97 shown to scale:

Spiky Pot 9 WIP

This is another in a series of spiky pots with faces drawn from Treasury of Fantastic and Mythological Creatures by Richard Huber.  

Finished Spiky Pot

Rune Stones

I posted a set of rune stones in 2010.  I made another blank set and never got around to painting them until today.  Everyone knows that alphabets are magical and can be used to accurately predict the present; the Nordic/Germanic Futhark alphabet is no exception.

In Good Company With Miss Piggy

This is a Google Image Result that groups my Vicious Animal Mug with some Miss Piggy mugs.  I feel that I'm in good company.

Spiky Pots 7 and 8 WIPs

These were intended to be two more spiky pots about 6 inches high and 6 inches in diameter.  The first one turned out to be more elaborate than I was expecting and I realized that if I covered the side and back with spikes, there would be no way to pick it up without damaging the spikes.  So I skipped the spikes.

(Non)-Spiky Pot #7, with a design from a Bhutanese mask:

View the completed Bhutanese Demon Pot here.

Spiky Pot #8, with a design from a Nepalese Wooden Trumpet Rest:

View the completed Nepalese Spiky Pot here.

Chwidencha Pot

This is a hand-built slab/coil pot with a chwidencha on the lid.  A chwidencha is a Dungeons & Dragons monster resembling a spider with an abnormal abundance of legs.  I love the onomatopoeic name, the sound the thing makes as it scuttles across the stone floor towards you in some dank pit to paralyze and devour you.  The pot is uneven and asymmetrical.  The chwidencha is more spider-like than my last one, but I still haven't solved the problem of creating the illusion of sharp angles necessary to make the jointed legs of arthropods look natural.

Distorted Chef WIP

View the completed Red Chef here.

In December, I bought two chef figurines at a dollar store.  I made molds of their faces and objects from the molds in this post.  Tonight I made a copy/interpretation of one of the chefs.  The figure itself is a distortion of human anatomy and I added another layer of distortion myself.  The arms were the most annoying part.  The left arm seems more distorted than the right arm, but I couldn't figure out what was making it look off.

Crumb WIP

This is a clay interpretation of an extremely flattering self-portrait by R. Crumb.  I like how it came out except I couldn't get the lines around the mouth right and the nose looks weird.  Noses never come out the way I want them.

Angry Nun Surrealist Object

This is a clay ornament which I posted on this blog a few years ago, but I was using low quality images that were also too small.  I just listed it on Etsy and I'm posting it again here with a better image.

This is a surrealist object from 2010 meant to be hung on one's wall. The shape has a cross at the top and Cthulhoid tentacles at the bottom. The central image is of an angry nun, the mold of which was taken from a wind-up fire breathing nun toy which breathed sparks out of its mouth. The other molds include tiny skulls from a Halloween decoration, a large skull from a Meerschaum pipe from Turkey, and frogs and a lion from some Japanese toys with interchangeable heads.

Chwidencha Sculpture

This is a sculpture of a Dungeons & Dragons monster called the chwidencha.  It resembles a spider that is almost all legs.  I gave it a head because my tiers of spider legs weren't dense enough to obscure the inside and it made more sense for it to have a head under there somewhere.  This piece was practice for the Chwidencha Pot.  I like how the glazes came out, but it lacks the angularity that would make it look like a real arthropod.

The official illustration of a chwidencha from the 3rd Edition D&D Fiend Folio:

Spiky Demon Pot WIP

My friend who commissioned the Big Spiky Pot last year asked for another one.  

Here is a more complete view.

Primeval, Voodoo, and Lovecraft

New Giraluna WIP

Finished Cyclopean Giraluna

Leo Lionni's surrealist botany textbook Parallel Botany was one of my earliest inspirations for creating clay objects.  I've made numerous giralunas, night-blooming flowers described by Lionni as the "most parallel of plants, most plantlike of the parallels."  This one is about 15 inches tall and is my first piece that won't fit on my shelf.  Here are the underlying slab pot and the finished giraluna with tendrils, petals, and molded eye.

Triangular Eyepot Tower WIP

This is a triangular slab/coil pot with 30 eyes.

Finished Triangular Eye Pot

I added some of the connecting pattern, but I don't think I'm done yet.

After one last edit:

This video is called "The Miracle of Birth":

Chamsas 94 and 95

Eye Tower Pot WIP

Behold the Eye Tower Pot as it spins slowly and magically in a circle while music plays.

Finished Ten-Eyed Pot

Chamsas 92 and 93

Aberrant Meercat Pot

I'm happy with how the sculptural part of the Aberrant Meercat Pot came out.  I've had several people tell me it looks like a dog, but I think it matches the shape of a meercat's head fairly well.  Here are some meercat photos for reference.

The Aberrant Meercat Pot.  I resisted the urge to try to match the coloration or to try to add texture.

This is my recent dream about a meercat:

I’m at a big party at the studio.  Someone hands me a live meercat.  It keeps biting me with its razor sharp teeth.  Other people are alarmed.  They ask if I let it bite me before.  Someone else holds the meercat and I’m relieved.  Some bites have broken the skin and I wonder if I should seek medical attention.  The meercat has grown into a large, vicious creature which gleefully terrorizes the people at the party.