FORM, SURFACE AND NARRATIVE: EXPERIMENTS IN SURFACE TREATMENT ON NARRATIVE HAND SIZE SCULPTURES
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Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2021-11-19
Type of Work
Department
Hood College Department of Art and Archaeology
Program
Ceramic Arts (MFA)
Citation of Original Publication
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States
Abstract
After creating life-sized sculpture work(s) with a major focus on form and anatomy for my Certificate Exhibit in 2015, I began work on my MFA. I continued working with life size figurative sculptures, refining my sculpting skills and experimenting with a number
of new finishes. The increased detail of the forms combined with the new surface treatments resulted in more interesting work and more intentional storytelling. The results were encouraging but the process was slow.
To speed up the process, I scaled down my sculptures to a hand-held size. These smaller forms allowed me to leverage my background in both puppetry and theater - expanding my storytelling by simplifying the form to be less life-like but more expressive. This gave fuel to further experimentation. To finish these forms, I needed a more flexible and reliable palate of color, texture and sheen that could be used to develop a multi layered surface and a painterly aesthetic. This led to the rigorous process of experimentation with Terra Sigillata, mason stains, oxides and various finishing washes and slips. The resulting finishes became my surface treatment toolkit and can be seen in my finished work.
This thesis is a presentation and explanation my process with examples of individual finished sculptures.