Skala

Ceramic Artist

Marilyn Levine

(1935-2005)

A well-known ceramic artist that creates "leather" goods out of ceramics to create realistic art that looks like real leather or canvas.

Marilyn uses a quasi-Surrealistic style that embraced ceramics along with goofy, exaggerated representations of daily life, was heating up. Ms. Levine's Funk phase included sculptures of shoes and sneakers oozing bright glaze.

She was a master of trompe-l’oeil, (an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions), she addresses every detail. From the delicate stitching on the edge of a tennis shoe to the fluid folds and seams of a jacket as it hangs on a wall peg.

I chose Ms. Levine because I really admire the detail and the realistic aspect of her works. Her creations look extremely real which intrigues me further into her pieces. I am very curious about what she used to create the real-life effects of her pieces to make them leathery-looking, I hope to come up with ways to mimic her technique.

Here is a link to her artworks :
http://users.lmi.net/ml/artworkframeset.html

Johan’s Jacket
1990

heART & soul 2010
"Best of Show"

Novac

"Novac"- meaning money. I chose to name this piece "Novac" because I felt like this is one of my best works yet, and since it was made for Heart and Soul I thought it would be appropriate. The process was very time consuming and a lot of work. The first step in making this peice was rolling about half an inch thick coils, in an array of different sizes and took a tooth pic and created slanted marks in the coils, kind of making a coral-like texture. After allowing the coils to dry in a leather state, I got a good sized plastic bowl and laid out a bottom and then began piecing the coils together in a sort of web-like structure with slip.

After the bowl had dried nearly to bone, I slowly took it out of the plastic bowl where it kept the shape of the bowl. I began to make barnacles out of rolled out balls of clay and stuck the end of a paint brush to create a hole in the barnacles. I then placed them inside the bowl and around the outside as well.

However, there were many obstacles making this piece. During the process of glazing the piece, a part of the coral "stems" got knocked of, therefore we had to wait another to start completely glazing because we had to place the broken coral back on. To do this, we used a mixture of glaze, vinegar and corn syrup and slipped in back onto the piece. I then began to glaze the piece in the glaze Aurora which is like a green-ish yellow in about three coats. After the firing of Aurora the color did not come out as expected, it seemed to hardly show.

I then glazed it in another glaze that was sort of similar called Green moss and to add something different to the piece, I added light and dark blue and green crushed glass in the center of the piece as well as in the barnacles mixed with clear glaze. The glass melted and created a nice finish to the center of the piece and the color showed as it was destined too. For a final touch I added Rub N Buff Gold onto the outer rims of the barnacles to give it one last touch.

Burlap Bowl

This bowl was made by slabs and a beach ball. I rolled out slabs of leather-like clay and pieced them onto the beach ball in rectangular pieces. After the ball had dried, I wanted to add texture to the piece, so I dipped burlap into watery slip and placed in onto the outer surface of the bowl. As the bowl fires in the kiln the burlap burns off but still leaves the mold of the burlap on the bowl. After the bowl was done being fired it was time to add some color. I sponged on different oxides and fired the bowl once more. This still was not enough, we added a yellow oxide by spraying it on it random areas and finished with a clear glaze. This project was fairly simple and different messing with oxides.

Crveno

"Crveno"- meaning red. I chose to name this piece red because the colors remind me of the burning red sun. This project consisted of wrapping coils into a bowl-like structure and adding barnacles to the outer surface by rolling balls into different sizes and creating a hole with the tip of a paint brush.

After making the bowl I began to disperse the barnacles around the bowl. After the barnacles were slipped on I took a tooth pic and jagged the edges of the barnacles by swiping them on the edge, creating a more rough look. After it was fired I painted the entire piece in a red underglaze, so the glaze would show through.

Soon after the red underglaze dried, I painted on the glaze called Red Dragon. This glazed turned out too dark, so I added another glaze to lighten it up called Sunset Orange. This blasted the color so beautifully in random areas. After that I put rub n buff on the edges of the barnacles as well as sponged in different places on the piece. I love this work!

Fish Scales

This is my first AP Ceramics piece that is complete. I absolutely love it! The colors are an array of blues, purples, and a yellow. The task was to make a ceramic mask, so I decided to base it around my sea-life theme and create a fish. I created the scales by this technique I learned from watching a ceramic artist create texture on a pot. The process of making the scales was an easy one. The first step to making them is to role a ball of clay about the size of a quarter. Next I placed the ball of clay onto the mask and at the bottom of the ball I began to push it into the clay and it allowed me to create a scale-like texture on the mask.