metal is clay

Making a hand-built sculptural porcelain flower vessel: I made four short videos showing my process as I hand-built this form, and I’ve put them all on this post, in reverse chronological order. The piece was built over a 5-week period, to the constant background of news coming from the radio—I’ve shared more about my thought process, and the difficult sources that were my inspiration, at the bottom of this post.  The final video, Part 4, shows me refining the form and details, and cutting away clay supports that have cradled the vessel over the last few weeks. The vessel is now loosely wrapped under 4 layers of soft plastic, and settled in for the long, slow dry before it can be fired. Scroll down for Parts 3, 2, and 1 to see how the form was developed.  2x speed. 🎶 Judson Crane "From The Earth" Time is an essential component in building complex pieces like this; clay will soften as it is worked, and by breaking my work up into sessions of a few hours a day, it allows physi...

Currently editing short “making of” videos for “Fire In The Belly”, the metal and clay sculpture I collaborated on with ceramic artist  Robin DuPont . The piece is on show at the Alberta Craft Council gallery in Edmonton as part of the Craft Collaborations fund-raising auction —40 artists have collaborated on one of a kind pieces. See more images on the @albertacraftcouncil instagram feed , or visit  www.albertacraft.ab.ca I’m always curious about how other people engage with all the delicious digital documentation that we have available to us—what impact does it have? How do other people use documentation for their own design process, and is it even necessary to them? I take a lot of video and stills as I work, for 2 key reasons: so that I can share more of the studio process, and because I find I learn a lot by looking through the camera. I think framing images on a small screen helps me to see shapes and character differently, and it has become an important design tool alon...

I made this video for the makeanddo virtual film festival at The Ceramic Congress 2021. It's an intro to the cheap and quick ‘jigs’—workshop devices that hold parts for you—that I made to give myself some extra hands while building “Pool”, a porcelain and metal sculpture. The sculpture is still a work in progress, I keep working on other projects and sneaking back to it, good thing that metal-work is so patient! You can watch the whole film festival on Youtube .  The film was edited by the very talented—and insanely productive—Carole Epp at musingaboutmud . Thank you Carole, awesome job! 🙏👏 Follow along with me in the studio @metalisclay on instagram   #ceramicsculpture #porcelain #themakingof #organicceramics #contemporaryporcelain #crunchyporcelain #contemporaryporcelainvessel #ceramiclife #pinchypinch #contemporaryceramicvessel #studioceramics #canadianceramics #benchpeg #benchtips #intheworkshop #wip #inthestudio #metalwork #canadianmetalsmith #vmaamember