Last weekend (February 23-24, 2013) was the fourth paperclay workshop I have taught at Santa Fe Clay. We had 14 people. Barbara Campbell ably assisted me and Todd Volz, the Santa Fe Clay Studio Manager, was great to work with. I was gratified to find that all of the participants really understood that the use of paperclay opens them up to new possibilities.
Here is the latest paperclay handout.

This piece is about that disconcerting or disorienting feeling of driving in a car and having the passenger(s) issue conflicting directions. 

Imbedded in the sculpture during the making is a rather large previously fired fragment of a face as well as a previously fired hand.  The use of paperclay allowed me to imbed these fired pieces and then fire the sculpture again without them cracking out of the piece.  Two metal pieces were added after the firing.

 When I am in the studio, I think that I am retreating from the world.  One of my recent pieces, however, reminds me that the world comes into the studio with me.

The piece is named “Wise Men Sailing…and the dish ran away with the spoon.”  Here’s a picture…

So, what is going on with this piece? 

As I was listening to an NPR program about the economy in Greece, and how one woman had been working at her job without any pay for a year!  I reflected on the financial “wise” men who had created this circumstance as well as the effect of my own retirement plans falling into a void.  This led to making three figures with avaricious expressions, fired in a fume fire for that burnt look.  I put them in a boat because three figures in a boat resonates with the old poem “Winkyn, Blinkyn and Nod”.  I had a pyramid piece that was perfect as the base.  Because the whole situation is so impossible to understand, I put them in their fantasy boat on top of a pyramid, and added the dish and the spoon to refer to the nonsense of the nursery rhyme.  Zombie masks rim the boat…my commentary on the wisdom of these men.  Even though the work was developed over many months, I still have not come to any better understanding of the financial situation!  “…The little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.”

Judy Nelson-Moore

Santa Fe, New Mexico 2012

I made this piece using a technique I am thinking of calling “ceramic collage.”  This means taking disparate elements, fired in different ways, and then putting them together post-firing into one sculpture. 

When I tried to take a photograph of this piece, it was difficult to portray it from one view.  The results of one of the single shots are shown at left.  It doesn’t really give you an idea of the totality of the piece. 

So, then I decided to try and use the panorama software on the ipad.  Interesting…if you turn around and take the pictures around you, you get the panorama.  If you walk around a fixed object and take pictures, you get kind of a composite of the piece.  While it is kind of unclear, it does give an interesting feeling of the piece…see the image below.

So, the genesis of this piece was an NPR segment on the economy in Greece talking about the effects of their economic austerity program on the lives of the people.  In particular, they interviewed a professional woman (chemist) who was working for a company that contracted with the government…and they had stopped paying her, but she continued to work.  Thinking about that and my own retirement plans sent crashing by the economy, I was thinking about the “wise” men in the financial world whose “brilliant” ideas, or maybe more likely whose personal greed, led us ordinary people into these circumstances.  Three figures sailing on a fantasy boat, zombie masks of their faces, monster face on the boat, all at the top of a pyramid…this is my comment in sculpture on these thoughts.

Wise Men Sailing…and the dish ran away with the spoon

To print this handout on paperclay for sculpture, click the full-screen icon: at the top right in the viewer above
Then in the full screen viewer, choose “file” on the top left and underneath that choose print (pdf).

To print this handout on paperclay for sculpture, click the full-screen icon:  at the top right in the viewer above
Then in the full screen viewer, choose “file” on the top left and underneath that choose print (pdf).