My Time in the Military, Love of Flowers Depicted in Ceramics

I hope you all had a great Fourth of July and loved the fireworks.  I also hope you are staying cool whenever possible because it is hot out there!

Well, I didn't get the junk room cleaned.  I woke up with a really bad headache and I was not in the mood to tackle that room.  Though I really need to get in there, sometime in the near future, and clean it.  I am also waiting for the camera to charge so I can take photos of things to post out on Etsy.  So, while I am waiting for the battery to charge, I thought I would post photos of my ceramic pieces from my spring semester class.

A disclaimer first.  During the spring semester I wanted to incorporate images of my time in the military and flowers.  These works are not a commentary against the military, our men and women serving our country or the wars we are engaged in.  The military images have personal meaning for me.  I love photographing flowers  My professor challenged me to combine these elements into my semester final project. 

These works are test pieces for me, because I have my senior show next spring semester.  I want to figure out what to have in the show.  The pieces allowed me make and to test underglaze colors and celedon colors to determine what will and won't work during firings.  I had a great time making these pieces and it brought back tons of memories.  I hope you enjoy my take of my time in the military with a bit of a "Mother Nature" spin.

My first pieces - it just hit me to go with pastel colors, because I am female, and when you think of a girl, you stereotypically think of pink.  So the M16 being pink is the first piece I did for my military theme ceramics.  I also liked the idea of the grenade and an explosion of colors.  I am also experimenting with slips and underglazes for the colors of the flowers and grenade.

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Pink M-16 and Flowers

Pink Grenade

Flowers and Grenade

My next project was incorporating my dog tags.  I also want to some way incorporate my great grandfather's, grandfather's and my dad's dog tags in the next project.  I am still contemplating the design.

My dog tags and a For-Get-Me-Not

My Rank During My Time in the Army

The next two bowls are of the vehicle I worked with while I was at Fort Hood.

TLQ and Flowers

TLQ, Flowers, Peace and Love

A gas mask and flowers.  The first image is just in black and white and flowers were suppose to be blue and purple, but they didn't fire right, so I will have to use a different underglaze when I color the flowers.  The second gas mask I love!  I wanted to somehow incorporate camo in my images and I loved how this turned out and the colors.

Mask and Flowers

Camo Mask and Flowers

I wanted to do a series of plates with my combat boots (I know weird, but I miss how comfortable my combat boots were and how much a part of your life they were).  The first plate is a nice looking boot with a tree full of flowers depicting the enthusiasm and how "gung ho" I was when I joined.  The second plate is an old and tired looking boot with a dead tree and only one branch showing a sprig of life.  This depicts how I felt when I left the army - worn out and disillusioned.

New Boot and Flower Tree

Old Boot and Dead Tree

The next three plates are just ideas I was playing with.  One is an effigy to a scale because I freaking hate being weighed!  There are some stupid things I did to try and make my weigh ins and I refuse to do it now!  The next plate is of my 4th ID patch and a life cycle of a flower.  The last plate is of a pick, chains and a wall and on the other side of the wall is a key.  I thought if I just got to the other side of the wall it would be all better (becoming a civilian) but the other side of the wall has its own set of problems.

Effigy to a scale

4thID Patch and Life cycle of a flower

Pick, Chains, Wall, Key

The next two bowls are of what I did in the military and an issue I had with one of my troops.  My job in the army was a Russian linguist, though I mostly worked in the motorpool or was out in the field. The image of the barrel of a gun and bullets was the only image I could come up with to show what happened with one of my soldiers.  I was his squad leader; he was my responsibility.  It is accurate, but fear not, I wasn't injured and defused the situation successfully.

Headphones, Russian, Flowers

Bullets, Barrel of a gun, flowers

Outside of the bowl with bullets

The final project I did for class is very near and dear to my heart.  While I was stationed at Fort Riley I was on a funeral detail.  I was a member of the firing squad who performed the 21 Gun Salute.  I felt honored to provide this service for those men and women who were being buried and for their families.  I am also still really angry that my grandfather refused to have a military funeral when he died.  Believe me, I nagged and nagged him, but he said no.  So, this project is sort a way to show my time of being on the funeral detail and dedicated to my grandpa.  I threw about 60 small plates and chose the best of the plates (21), I then drew on the plates "Taps", the plates were dipped in Celedon and then fired.  This is still a project in the process of being made.  My professor and I critiqued it and I think it is going in a totally different direction.  Here is my first trail of 21 Gun Salute.

Layout of 21 Gun Salute

Close up of Taps

That is it for the spring semester.  This fall I will be a ceramics and metals studio tech.  I really don't know what to expect from doing that.  I know I will be working on my senior show projects.  Once I have the projects created I will post more pictures.  I hope you enjoyed my take of my time in the military depicted in ceramics.

Crashed and Burned but Productive Studio Weekend

Mom Crashed on the Floor

Today was another day in the studio.  I think mom and I are trying to make up for all the time we were not in the studio for the past month.  I think we both have agreed that we cannot do two days in a row in the studio.  Mom's neck gives out and I have shooting pains going up my feet (even with inserts in).  Goodness we are getting old and falling apart.  How do you like the photo of mom crashed out on the studio floor?  Pathetic, aren't we?

I am excited about all the work that we did get done.  I was able to enamel two very large bowls, which we probably won't ever do again, or if we do, we will only make one a year.  Those bowls are a pain in the a$$ to cut out and even worse trying to get the enamel on the bowl and then putting the bowl in the kiln.  Though one of the bowls is a wedding gift for my aunt, so she is well worth all the swearing mom and I did while making that bowl!

I was also able to enamel two more leaf pendants, a happy/sad face pendant, a film reel pendant (part of a project I am working on), two pairs of hand pendants for earrings, and fixed a sun flare pendant and a dream shaman pendant.  Though on the sun flare pendant the holes filled with enamel, and to be honest I sure as hell was not going to drill out the enamel.  Mom and I are going to have to improvise on adding wire to the pendant for a loop. 

I think tomorrow will be a relaxing day, maybe.  Mom is going to work on cleaning her house and I want to tackle my junk room (lord give me strength!).  I then want to come over to mom's to work on lampwork beads and finish off the tanks so we can order more oxygen.  I also want to take photographs of my ceramic pieces from my spring semester and re-take photographs of the pieces we have worked on this weekend and get them posted out on Etsy.  Wow - not so relaxing is it.  I also want to order some enamel because we are out of or almost out of colors that we use alot (credit card save the day).

Ok, enough of my typing your eyes off :)  Onto the images....

Bowls

"I Do" bowl

"Lollipop Lollipop" Bowl

Pendants

Happy/Sad Face

Dream Shaman Pendant

Film Reel Pendant

Trans Greens Leaf

Spruce Leaf

Sun Flare Pendant

Earrings

Yellow/Green Earrings

Yellow/Purple Earrings

Long, Long Studio Saturday

Today was a long day in the studio, seven and a half hours.  OMG my feet hurt and mom's neck is killing her.  I was able to get the following items enameled: three bowl, two leaf, a gingko pendant and four kokapelli pendants.  The kokapelli pendants were a request from a friend.  She asked me to use black, turquoise and fuschia, though I didn't have fuschia so I tried to improvise.  (If you want to see the names of the colors I used please head over to our Facebook page.  I will also work on loading the photos to our Flickr account).

When we first got to the studio we filed and sanded the pieces, which seemed to take forever.  Once that was done I started on my enameling assembly line.  Mom worked on cutting out more pendants to enamel because I want to get those posted out on Etsy.  I think the pendants might sell better than the assembled necklaces, though I could be wrong.

I am so happy with the way the enameled pieces turned out.  I had to improvise on fixing the kokapelli pendants because the trivets but indentations on the sides of the piece, so I have to file the indentations down so they don't get caught on clothes or cut someone.  I hate how the filing makes the backside of the pendant look, so I improvised to fix the problem.  There was a lava rock sitting on the kiln with wires sticking out, so I hung the kokapelli pendants on the wire and stuck it back in the kiln for about 45 seconds to melt the glass again.  Overall I pretty happy with the way the back of the pendants turned out.  I think I am going to wrench my shoulder of the socket trying to pat myself on the back.

Today was also the day I launched our EB Bead and Metal Works Facebook page.  I tried to load the Facebook page to blogger but I am having issues, I might have to do log the page from work.  I know I have the pop up blocker off, but when I tried to load the page I keep getting blocked.  Oh well, another day's work.

I did take the time and take photographs (though I really wanted to go home and crash on my comfy couch and not come up until starting the process all over tomorrow).  Enjoy!

Bowls

"Flower Power" - Peace symbol design

"Awakening" - Lotus flower design

"Forlorn" - bonsai tree design

Kokapelli pendants

Pendant 1

Pendant 2

Pendant 3

Pendant 4

Gingko and Leaf Pendants

Gingko Leaf Pendant

Red/Orange/Yellow Leaf Pendant

Yellow Leaf Pendant

June Monthly Bead Challenge

Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in "Chilperic," 1895-96
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (French, 1864-1901)
Oil on canvas. 145x149cm

This month's Art Bead Challenge was a real collaboration between mom and I.  I really wanted to add a copper enameled pendant to the piece, since that is what mom and I really like to focus on.  Mom sketched up a dress for the design, and she sawed the dress out of copper.  I then enameled the dress pendant and made the lampwork glass beads (floral beads and spacer beads).  Mom came up with the necklace design and strung most of the beads and seed beads.  I helped at the end by adding the last of the seed beads and crimping the necklace to a clasp (mom hates to crimp).

The one thing I need to improve upon is measuring.  Mom had the idea of wrapping the seed bead strands around the main string of beads, to make it look like the ruffle of a dress; but I cut the wire too short (I thought I made it long enough).  Mom knows my challenge of not measuring and she dealt with the short wires and made the necklace work (we hate stringing seed beads or we would have done a "do over").  Overall I am really happy with how the necklace turned out.  This months challenge reinforced how well mom and I work together.  Mom is the bomb!

Full Necklace

Close up of floral beads

Close Up of dress

Giveaway Winner Revealed

Today is the big reveal of who won our Leaf ThumBOWLina bowl.  Mom and I decided to show you the process of how we picked the name.

We first typed all the names into a table in a Word document

We then cut the names out
Folded the names and placed them in a bowl (ceramic bowl made by my ceramics professor Siggy)

We then had my co-worker draw the name out of the bowl - so there was no cheating

Here is the big reveal of the name
Drum roll please
..
..
..
And the winner is:

Winner is Baglady

Baglady could you please email us with your address and we will get the bowl sent off to you as soon as possible.  Our email is:  e13e14mccord@yahoo.com

Thank you all for participating in our first giveaway and for your lovely comments because your comments make it all worthwhile for us!

I know mom and I would like to do this again in the future, so keep your eyes open for our next giveaway.

We Are Back

Mom and I are back from vacation (rats!).  We just got back home from dropping my niece and nephew off in St. Louis with my brother.  Mom took the kids up to Michigan with our family to a cottage we all rent for a week.  This year (no money) I didn't go.  I had a whole list of things that I wanted to get done; do you think any of it got done, NO!  Though I did get some mulch laid, my yard mowed and mom's yard mowed and I got the beads made up for the Monthly Bead Soup Challenge, but didn't get the necklace put together yet.  All I did was sit on my comfy couch and read and it was nice!  Tomorrow it is back to the grind.

We will have the drawing for the ThumBOWLina in the morning.  I have the names typed out and we are going to cut them out, place them in a bowl, and have a co-worker draw a name out of a bowl.  We will post pictures and make the announcement in the morning.  I hope you are all as excited as we are about the drawing.

Both mom and I are done for the night (eight hour drives seem a lot longer now).

Bead Soup is On

Close Up of Focal

The Party is on - Bead Soup Party that is. This is our first time participating in the party, and we are so excited! Our partner for this Bead Soup Party was Christine of A Hot Piece of Glass. She sent us a wonderful assortment of her beads that reminded mom and me of summer, so the name of this piece is Summer Lovin'. Christine also sent us a handmade clasp, accent beads and colored Viking Knit chain. We made large jump rings with 18 guauge blue and red craft wire to connect Christines's lampworked beads. We used 20 gauge red craft wire to make the connecting loops for each bead. We created a focal using three of Christine's beads and a wire spiral she created. We cut the Viking Knit in half and then created double strands of accent beads to drape around the VK. Sterling Silver beads we used to border Christine's smallest bead to finish off the necklace and feed into her clasp.

In conjunction with The Bead Soup Party, mom and I decided to have a giveaway. If you would like to participate please go to the Giveaway Post and leave a comment.

I hope you enjoy the piece because we had a blast creating it.

Full View of Summer Lovin'

Mom wearing Summer Lovin'

Handmade clasp by Christine

Summer Lovin'