Caymon Granillo's ceramic experience!
"wide project"
This is the freshly made "wide project" that i made when i was attempting a much larger cylinder, but after a few failed attempts at putting a lip on it i decided it would be a lot better for everyone that it became a bowl, i fully intend on slicing off the foot and giving a more rounded base
Lid
This is the lid for a small ceramic piece i made earlier, looks a little tall right now but i fully intend on shearing it down to a reasonable depth
My Final Essay
My time at mount si high school as a ceramics student has been some of the most fun periods of my day. Ceramics is a very interesting class to me and I really enjoy doing it. But on the subject of the actual art portion of ceramics, I love both the process of making actual ceramic projects, as well as combining the reagents for glazes to create different colors, textures, mottling, and cracking. During my senior year I moved less from the standard art student position to a more TA position, making all the glazes, different varieties of colors and maintaining them for the use of the class and all the other classes.
My key contribution to the class was the creation of glazes. This job included taking bags of pre mixed material and combining them with water to a correct consistency, followed by filtering the glaze through mesh in order to make sure there were no lumps. I also dabbled in the creation of glazes from raw materials. When firing the raku, I researched glazes for the kiln, as there were no raku pre-made glazes available, and I created a few glazes relying only upon percentages and a 3-bar scale. The raku glazes looked phenomenal in my opinion, having a shiny coppery look to them, as if they were coated in metal. This is what a majority of my time in class was spent on, though I didn’t throw and projects, I made up for it with my learning and working on the making of glazes for the class.
How I made the glazes I made was quite simple, and for others somewhat difficult and took a very long time to perfect. For most of the stock glazes the recipe is ½ the pre-mix and ½ water, but the real challenge fixing glazes that are “broken”. The yellow matt was horrid, it looked fake and out of place on projects, and to remedy this issue I kept putting in clear in order to give it a more glossy texture so the yellow would look better, and through trial and error I finally got a finished project that looked good. Also the raku glazes were difficult. Raku glazes are very intricate recipes, consisting of 5 parts frit, 2 parts soda ash, ball clay, and a whole menagerie of different ingredients, and putting these all together was a bit of a pain. But all in all I feel I was successful, there was never any shortage of glaze and when there was, I was on top of it.
To wrap it all up, I learned a lot this year about of different chemicals react in a glaze, what metals react with what metals, and what colors are produced by different materials. I also learned to be a helping hand to my teacher, helping students with ceramics questions and periodically cleaning the back room. I feel that I will take these lessons in helping students for later in life, and remember fondly the wonderful hours spending time making art.
My time at mount si high school as a ceramics student has been some of the most fun periods of my day. Ceramics is a very interesting class to me and I really enjoy doing it. But on the subject of the actual art portion of ceramics, I love both the process of making actual ceramic projects, as well as combining the reagents for glazes to create different colors, textures, mottling, and cracking. During my senior year I moved less from the standard art student position to a more TA position, making all the glazes, different varieties of colors and maintaining them for the use of the class and all the other classes.
My key contribution to the class was the creation of glazes. This job included taking bags of pre mixed material and combining them with water to a correct consistency, followed by filtering the glaze through mesh in order to make sure there were no lumps. I also dabbled in the creation of glazes from raw materials. When firing the raku, I researched glazes for the kiln, as there were no raku pre-made glazes available, and I created a few glazes relying only upon percentages and a 3-bar scale. The raku glazes looked phenomenal in my opinion, having a shiny coppery look to them, as if they were coated in metal. This is what a majority of my time in class was spent on, though I didn’t throw and projects, I made up for it with my learning and working on the making of glazes for the class.
How I made the glazes I made was quite simple, and for others somewhat difficult and took a very long time to perfect. For most of the stock glazes the recipe is ½ the pre-mix and ½ water, but the real challenge fixing glazes that are “broken”. The yellow matt was horrid, it looked fake and out of place on projects, and to remedy this issue I kept putting in clear in order to give it a more glossy texture so the yellow would look better, and through trial and error I finally got a finished project that looked good. Also the raku glazes were difficult. Raku glazes are very intricate recipes, consisting of 5 parts frit, 2 parts soda ash, ball clay, and a whole menagerie of different ingredients, and putting these all together was a bit of a pain. But all in all I feel I was successful, there was never any shortage of glaze and when there was, I was on top of it.
To wrap it all up, I learned a lot this year about of different chemicals react in a glaze, what metals react with what metals, and what colors are produced by different materials. I also learned to be a helping hand to my teacher, helping students with ceramics questions and periodically cleaning the back room. I feel that I will take these lessons in helping students for later in life, and remember fondly the wonderful hours spending time making art.