This week I focused a lot on getting my screens ready and printing.  I've been looking at a lot of bright neon colorful scans.  I chose to use the bright colors and also try them on some ceramic tiles too.  The next step for these is trying to print on other materials like glass!  I also will make a few more test tiles and then decide how I will paint my larger figure.

Viscous Matrix, 2021.
Ceramic, Wax, Wool, Yarn, Thread, Beads.

Project Description: 
Reclaiming the language from doctors, Viscous Matrix is a figurative representation of chronic pain from the connective tissues.  Humans are all only made of cells.  This figure is taken over by the painful cells, consuming their body.  The inside of the body is hidden, with all its mishaps and malfunctions, this narrative piece explores invisible chronic illness.  

Visual Description:
A baby blue ambiguous figure with cut out eyes and mouth.  Beads and wool trickle down from the mouth, eyes, nose, and ears.  The ceramic figure is coated in a thin layer of wax and looks like skin from a distance.  From the chest down the figure fades into bumpy cells.  The pink cells are glossy with glaze.  Ceramic spheres as cells form at the bottom of the piece.  Hanging strands of blue and purple yarn hang down with crocheted pink spheres.  Peeking out from the inside of the figure are wool purple spheres that were crocheted.    

This week we fired a raku kiln and I fired a gas kiln for my blue cell figure.   I also started the process of exposing my printmaking screens.  I am doing a colorful, multi-layer print of a body scan.  This will go with the next figure that I create!

This piece is fully decorated and now going into the kiln!  I will be assembling it next weekend or so after it is out of the kiln.  The bottom will have yarn connected through the holes and crocheted into cells.  I will also be trying to add beads to this work to mimic the dots and round cell patterns I am creating.  I thought it would go well together, but I have to see if it looks how I am imagining.  I am really excited for this part of the process.  I have a lot of fun crocheting and putting the finishing materials on the ceramic piece.