Bragging

Today I want to post some of Z's work from this past semester. She took ceramics, and every week when she came home she was simply covered in clay. And very discouraged. My romantic illusion of the smoothly humming pottery wheel was shattered by her tales of woe - she'd start to get her blob of clay to look like something, and then it would suddenly all go to smush inexplicably. She found the pottery wheel extremely frustrating.

Nevertheless, she managed to turn out two cute little mugs by the end of the semester.
Aren't they nice? She's pretty happy with them, particularly since her professor was a very hands-off teacher and she received little in the way of guidance throughout the semester. So she was basically self-taught.

Her favorite piece, however, was a "built" project (i.e. not thrown on the wheel), a replica of an ancient statue of a hawk.
She was happy with every phase, from the building to the glazing, and I think it's quite handsome, too.

My favorite of her works is a pair of vases with tiny ocean creatures. Z isn't pleased with the way the glazes came out; many of the glazing powders were mislabeled in the studio, so she didn't get what she'd expected. But I love them, and she gave them to me for Mothers' Day.
I particularly like the little sea creatures. Aren't they dear?

Two other pieces she did are also quite nice. The glaze on this one is pretty cool, and I love the multiple holes in the top:
Another view of it, from the side:
And this one she plans to take with her to college in the fall to hold her paintbrushes (she's also taking the little mugs):
Finally, here is the chocolate mandala she and her cousins made for our Passover Seder this past April. At the end of the Seder we dismantled it and every guest took some of the chocolates home with them - similar to the sweeping away of a Tibetan sand mandala and dispersing of the sands in the waters of a river. Yum!
Tomorrow, another showcase.

~Cheers