While I can’t get out (after two years of avoiding it, I tested positive for Covid earlier this week), I’m trying to keep busy hand-building these little clay pieces. They’re not finished and won’t be fired. More like sketches in clay.
I start with a chunk of clay and pinch it, with no particular shape or outcome in mind but trying to keep any interesting surfaces or edges. Then I slowly combine these randomly pinched pieces until a form begins to take shape. Sometimes they slump under their own weight or lay on their side, and I let them, trying to let go of as much control as possible. Other times, an idea does arise during making. In the first form below, partway through, the inside seemed to want to become the outside, and I thought about Klein bottles. While the finished piece is not a Klein bottle, the form is influenced by the idea. And yet still intuitively and improvisationally made.
