Continuing in chronological order, before I show you the results from firing Gary the Groundhog. First were a few spring pieces. Up now: the results from the WCC woodfire workshop, led by Simon Levin. In that firing, I had two sets of three sculptures each, several of the grinding stone forms, a couple of older cups from the series, nine or ten small teabowls, and a bunch of pods, which were the subject of previous posts here and here. Here are the two groups of sculptures. (I’ll shoot and post the other work from that firing after Thanksgiving.)

This post is also about what I think about in making photographs, viewing photographs, and selecting photographs.

This is one of my final selections for these three sculptures. They’re hand-built with a heavily amended, deliberately nonplastic clay. Tried making only one line in these, to see what happens. I picked this image to describe the three pieces as objects - I do want (*see revision here) to tell graduate schools what they’re looking at, even if I’m more interested in suggesting different ways of looking at the pieces.

For the last year or so, I’ve been working to be cognizant of all the decisions that I make in the ceramic process, and trying to be deliberate about each decision. The camera is a way of censoring, of deciding what information is given to an audience: another decision. In this project as a whole, I’ve been photographing the work in unexpected ways. Don’t think I’m just being contrarian for its own sake: I tend to use a camera to compose images rather than document objects. The choices in photography naturally express an amalgam of my interests. Scale, distilling experience, directed views, qualities of space, unexpected perspective, how all these affect the experience of viewing. It’s interesting to observe how my process comes together.

So, back to selecting images to describe my work. I had an idea I’m excited about – display the pieces, interesting as objects in themselves, with photographs that invite different ways of looking at them. I imagine this being really successful at challenging the usual way of viewing work in a gallery setting. Whether it’s a scale-warping image like the one above, or a macro shot that invites appreciation of subtle variations in surface, images give the viewer a perspective that’s different than strolling by and viewing from standing height, and invites them to look more closely.

That said, this is the other final selection for this group of sculptures. It works. As an image: I like the mono quality, the softness of the foreground and background color, their lower contrast against the pieces, how the whole image highlights subtle variations in color and texture. It describes the pieces and the surfaces. And the perspective suggests a different experience of viewing at the pieces, suggests a different scale for them.

Another image I liked, but not enough. It emphasizes how short these are, and I like the flow of the eye across this image. I like how each piece has a similar halo on it from the firing, too.

Since the lines flow across the image, the eye tends to slide right across, too, and fall off the edge.

Whereas this from a farther vantage point, with the same composition. Since the pieces are captured within the frame, it holds one’s eye longer, too. I tried to get good contrast between the front pieces and the rear one, using a little shadow to differentiate. Turned the pieces so the line would flow easily, and so that areas of color would work together. I’m interested in the way the subjects of the image paint or draw or imply lines and areas of color, purely as a flat compositional effect. Hum, maybe this should be the image-that-describes-the-objects.

This image is my favorite for these two.

This image is also really descriptive. The way the flashing flows from the wad marks makes the pieces look as though they’re leaning away from each other. I went for the other image because it has more of the swirling visual flow that I like.  This one is more bam, bam, visual assault: hot stuff, but not as easy on my eyes. There are a few factors that I can identify, and they all create an image that feels too regimented. The relationship of figure and ground, the flow of the physical lines, the flow of the flashing lines, the way the wad marks create a grid: two, two, two, two. Each of these factors, when looked at in the other image, contribute to a very different visual flow.

Last image. Surprise: it’s the other side of the two above, and the third in the set. I like the softer colors, the way I got the lines on the pieces to ebb and flow to move unjarringly across the image. It doesn’t have the dramatic flashing, which makes for a great photo, but maybe detracts from the anthropomorphism that I’m after. The color of the middle and right pieces are nearly the same, so I used shadow to add depth. A little less shadow would have been fine. The brown curved flash on the right piece references the brown curved flash in the middle of the left piece. The silicon carbide drips make these wonderful soft-colored and soft-edged splotches.

So, there’s that.