my unfired piece 1

9/20/11

Space for living is borrowed and ephemeral. People build giant monstrosities of homes that will be acted upon by entropy from the moment the first nail is pounded home. It may be a long time before the home is reduced to ashes, scrap-wood or a pile of rocks but it is bound to happen eventually. In the animal kingdom arrangements can be less permanent. Some animals dig a burrow that will cave in later in the next year but it serves as winter protection. I will admit that some creatures may use natural caves as shelter but elements still erode mountains and hills over time. In Kansas where I live we have these wasps called mud daubers that build nests for their larvae made out of mud. There are several types of these wasps and each builds a different type of nest. Recently one built a nest in the air conditioning unit in one of our drawing classrooms here at the university. When the professor turned the unit on she was bombarded by bits of mud and chopped up wasp larvae and dead spiders. You see mud daubers are tolerated around here not only because they are hard to get rid of but also because they kill spiders. They are the number one predator of black and brown widow spiders around here. The mud daubers put dead spiders in the larvae tubes before they seal them up to feed their young. The nature of housing to decay and particularly the making of nests by mud daubers inspired my piece. First I built radiating pods from clay body with coarse sand mixed in and molded them together to have one opening. I coated the piece with a rough platy slip to create a natural texture and placed the piece in a natural location where I could record the process of the piece returning to nature. I may help nature along from time to time as I do have a schedule to finish the process by. The first two pictures show are both a macro shot and a far away shot. The piece is rough like a stone and already appears as if it were what it is intended to resemble in a way. The location is ideal for the recording of the deterioration bit by bit.

9/27/11

The piece has not changed much included are two photos and a photo of my awesome hat (it is awesome). As not much has changed I will force the play thursday by dumping 20 oz of coloured water (for visibility). We will see then what will happen. I hope lots of clay will just soften and melt off that would be awesome!!!