Maker's Marks

Designing my maker's marks, I knew I wanted to make simple yet introspective pieces. Each of my three designs followed this goal. The first is an eye, inspired by the eye of protection. This is a mark meant to watch over my work, whether it's in the kiln or being drunk out of. I really love the eye shape when pressed into the clay, as it adds a lively spirit to the clay. My second piece is a simple star. Specifically, I went for an organic look, where the star's imprint looks like it could be a naturally formed plant that was hardened to be used as a maker's mark. I really enjoy how the star comes out; the soft edges on the maker's mark itself look soft and comforting. The last maker's mark I made was a ghost. I chose this as I thought there is a cohesiveness between it and the other two; all of them slightly organic, with an almost spiritual element to them. Along with the organic theme, each has a twisted handle. Overall, I'm very happy with the set of them.

Top & Side Views

Pinch Pots

If I am provided a piece of paper, whether a worksheet in calculus or a page scribbled with notes, there is a guaranteed chance somewhere in the margins you will find a sporadically drawn face. It becomes a requirement for me, an unstoppable force of will, to erect a face. Why? For me, faces present perhaps the most interesting aspect of the human experience: crevices of perception in which we attribute our own selfhood (if you ask someone where in their body they believe themselves to be, they most likely will point to their head). Faces are not just a window into the person across from you's soul, but where our own periphery and qualia is generated. Our nose, ears, and mouth give birth to experience. These elements that make up a face are the tangible reifications of subjective experience. My friends are quite familiar with my notebooks and pages full of faces, and it was almost a joke that at some point in ceramics I would make one of the faces (colloquially known to us as the stop-sign, as it's always drawn in some form of red pigment). This manifestation of the stop-sign is seen in the middle of the collection of face-pots I made over the course of this semester. My goal in depicting these 3D faces is a hope to get people to reexamine their own place in reality. Their disposition in our society, along with their subjective experience, should become the focus when seeing the faces on display. Reexamine who you are, why you are, and what, as an agent in our chaotic world, you are meant to bring forth.

Top & Side Views

Midpoint and Completed

Coil Build

My coil build’s goal was to construct something inviting, using the patterns of coils to get a cyclical and repeating shape. This cyclical element was an attempt to be analogous to nature. The same way a flower turns in on itself or how animal irises are made up by these vast, complex networks of pigmented muscles allowing eyes to dilate and contract. The two main spirals on either side of this piece are perhaps the greatest reification of this idea. Adjacent to them are handles, made of twisted coils. They were added as I wanted to give more form to the top of the main section of the coil build. I find their twists incredibly satisfying and aesthetically pleasing.

Top & Side Views

Midpoint & Completed

Slab Build

My slab build came out of a long-running desire to build something sculptural. If I was given a residency somewhere, I would build some gargantuan sculpture. For this piece, I wanted to channel that into an architectural and dynamic shape. I was heavily inspired by Zaha Hadid, one of my personal favorite architects. After showing the complete build around, I consistently got asked what the exact meaning of it is. My design is meant to be a brutalist garden, devoid of the classical fingerprints of our current world and meant to beg the viewer to ask what the architecture and environments of the future could be. I want it to be somewhat uncomfortable and foreign, to bring the viewer into a mental state capable of imagining a building in a futuristic world. As we quickly approach the 2030s and beyond, the contradictions of capitalism intensify, and technological revolutions like AI seem to be on the horizon, the contemporary ideas of being a human may completely change. My sculpture is meant to bring you to that point: past the singularity.

Top & Side Views

Midpoint and Completed