Tool Specificity and project success

Sometimes when tasked with what should be a simple job we find ourselves taking elaborate and convoluted detours as we must reroute our work to accommodate the lack of tools designed for very specific purposes. My simple bisque stamp for my Mud Quilt project is no exception. My prototype is a prototype not because I needed to work out how to approach the project but rather because I was not able to construct the piece to my liking with the tools that I had at hand.

As you can see below I am making a cube with each of the six sides featuring a common arrangement of basic shapes that are used to form many quilt patterns. The tool that I needed was a slab cutter that could precisely cut 45° angles on my square slabs so that they fit together precisely and formed a strong edge that can withstand the pressure of being pressed into the mud.

I could have ordered the tool delaying my project, but fortunately we have a 3D printer and the skills to design simple objects like this one. An hour and a half after hitting print I was able to string up this simple little tool and cut perfectly beveled clay edges. It works so beautifully that I’ve printed several for each of the ceramic studios so that other student’s slab building can benefit from beautifully beveled edges.

Reflections on Mud Quilts

This body of work that I have begun is little more than a sort of scratching or mark making in the dirt not unlike that work we did as children. This native clay accepts my thoughts and intentions, my rhythm, my pattern making, my timidity and holds their form as a memory for a while. These are not stable works as they are susceptible to traffic, construction, and the elements just to name a few vulnerabilities.

I was able to revisit Impression 003 three days after it was made to document changes in the piece. The clay at the site had a drastic change in color becoming lighter as it dried. The shapes made by the compression of my stamp retained more moisture and were darker in appearance giving the piece a heightened contrast. My lettering which was hardly discernable at all when I created it could be clearly read.

You can see in the cracked and drying clay around the quilt that my work brought stability to the earth at this construction site. The piece survived for many days; even after several rains it was still partially visible.

Since this impression I have been working on a bisque stamp with which I hope to make larger and more quilt-like impressions. The prototype is in the kiln as I write. Below you can see a couple of photographs of the stamp in progress:

Be Frank

Today I visited Frank Liske Park after most of this weekends rains had subsided. I wanted to experiment with pressing designs into the ground. I took my quilt inspired watercolor palette from this summer’s Topics In Ceramics class and also some rubber letter stamps. I also played around with stamping with found rocks and sweetgum balls.

The sweetgum balls were too soft from the rain and gave way before making too much of an impression. The rocks did okay and with persistence perhaps you could find a rock with clearly defined edges that might work quite well. One thing that I noticed with the rocks is that it created a resistance/suction with the earth and sometimes a clump would stick to the rock and come away ruining the pattern. The rubber stamps did okay on some surfaces but are really too shallow to make much of an indention in the coarser grands of the surfaces I could find.

I thought that sandy breaks along the creek bank might work well but they turned out to be a bit to coarse and granular to capture good details. In the end I good a good impression in a muddy road exiting a picnic area – this is the Impression that I chose to document:

I experimented documenting an Impression with my GoPro and also documented other things from the site– some videos of the storm water flowing over the rocks and waterfalls, some beautiful fungi and a bright chartreuse lichen. You can take a look at everything on Google Drive.

The Seed of An Idea

Today I began a project that I have named Mud Quilts which is my very first site specific project. I created an Instagram account to document each site and work. Visit MudQuilts if you are interested in following along as I’m not sure I’ll document every site in this journal or site.

This is my first Impression made with a hickory nut shell in the root ball of an old tree fall.

The main aim of this project is to bring awareness to and comment on the complicated way that we as humans shape and form landscapes and places as well as how landscapes and places shape and form our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual lives.

I have set up two very simple parameters for my project:

1. Neither to add anything to nor to take anything away from my sites but to only leave an impression once I’ve left.

2. Document each site on my Instagram account using photographs and the site’s geotag.

I plan to form a series of ceramic stamps in which to explore leaving impressions at each site location. One question that I’m asking myself right now regards water. Will I allow myself to moisten sites in order to achieve better impressions and if so can I bring my own water or limit myself to water sources at or near the site. I will post about those decisions here whenever I am forced to make them.

Interestingly, when I began this Instagram account and named the project by picking a hashtag I stumbled upon another artist , Terri Dowell-Dennis, who had used the hashtag #mudquilt a few times. I did not want to bomb her beautiful hashtag so I added an ‘s’ to mine. Her works involve playing around with symmetry of photographs of mud to create textile like effects. She has some other pieces which she calls ‘markings’ that are of a similar nature.

I am choosing not to follow anyone or add any hashtags to my posts at this time, nor am I posting about or linking to it from my larger personal Instagram account. I want to know what will happen if I allow this project to develop organically and fully free from the pressure of developing a social media presence. The project will be visible and can be located from this website and I will also be experimenting with signing and numbering each site with an impression. If anyone finds the site they will be able to locate the project by following the tag.

I think this has the potential to develop into a collaborative project by sharing ceramic stamps with others and receiving stamps from them in exchange. I could host an event and invite the public to participate in the making of a quilt, etc. This could add another layer of meaning not only to the process but also contribute to the understanding of the main premise.