Ars Poetica
Ars Poetica
My mother makes ceramic figurines.
It's a complex process.
First she picks a mold;
catalogs or other people's pieces,
including her earlier work,
inspire her choices,
unless in a workshop with an assigned mold.
Her subjects often include
fanciful forest creatures
like gnomes, fairies, or elves...
or frogs that you think
might become princes should you kiss them.
Sometimes she picks more realistic designs
like delicate dancing girls, quaint cottages or crazy clowns.
The next step is to mix the slip
(finely divided clay and water),
pour it into the mold,
and let it dry.
Once the casting is removed from the mold,
it's called greenware and is still relatively soft,
so that imperfections
can be cleaned up
before the glaze is applied.
By cutting more deeply into the clay,
more significant changes can be made,
like emphasizing the cottage windows
or removing one toadstool too many.
Next my mother picks her palette of glazes,
setting the tone for the piece,
and decides what colors to apply where.
She carefully paints the glazes,
trying to get just the right color
in just the right place.
After painting comes firing.
The kiln heats the clay
until the individual particles
fuse into a stronger whole.
The glazes undergo the chemical transformations
that bring out their final colors.
These transformations are often very dramatic,
and sometimes there are surprises, both bad and good.
To this almost complete figure,
my mother applies a second layer of glaze,
adding more color and bringing out additional details.
After a second firing, the piece is finished
except for some touchup work and final polishing.
Well, ideally that's how the process goes.
Realistically, because of limitations of
time, interest, inspiration, current skill, and materials,
my mother has many incomplete pieces,
from half-baked clowns, to frogs awaiting firing,
to princesses poised for final polishing.