Tardigrade 4

The interdimensional youth craze for the adorable and vacuum-resistant water bears has resulted in the sales and departure of my previous three tardigrades.  Here is #4.  I made flat, clawed feet more similar to mammalian bear feet than real water bear feet, hoping that they wouldn't break off in the kiln.  The feet on the caudal segment lost a few toes, but otherwise I like how it came out.

Mako Root Objects

I found a figure of a white, ape-like creature called Mugato.  I don't usually buy Star Trek objects and I hadn't seen the episode from the original series, but I couldn't resist this one.  It came with several accessories.  I learned from a collectors' website that this is a "mako root for Nona to cure Kirk with," but otherwise I would have had no idea what this thing was.

Horned Devotion Cup 2

This is the second of the Horned Devotion Cups. I named the original sculptures devotions around Halloween 2011 to differentiate them from the other series of sculptures I had made called atavisms. Someone asked, "What's a Devotion Cup?" and I couldn't think of an answer.

 

Space Coyotes 6 and 7

Two Clay Objects My Father Made

These are the two clay objects my father made when he visited me at the pottery studio.

This one survived the bisque kiln but broke in the glaze kiln, which is unusual.  Usually if something is going to break, it breaks during the bisque firing.

Dumbo Octopus Sculpture: A Real Sea Critter?

I listed my Dumbo Octopus Sculpture on Etsy and, as a part of my far-reaching and well-thought-out marketing strategy, posted a picture of the Dumbo Octopus Sculpture with my cat Calvin on a Reddit forum entirely devoted to images of cats.

Someone posted a comment showing concern for the sea creature about to eaten alive by a cat.  I'm flattered that someone took my sculpture for a real octopus and it makes me happy to know that there are people like this brave individual looking out for the safety of the small and the slimy.

Chwidencha Pot WIP

Finished Chwidencha Pot

My shelf is almost clear and that means it's time for more large projects.  This is a pot with a Chwidencha on top.  A chwidencha is a spider-like creature with several tiers of legs.

Extruder Objects

I've been using a small clay extruder for some of my recent work.  I've been looking for excuses to incorporate the excess extruded clay and here they are.  The wise man came out; the other one has a skull under there somewhere, but it's covered by the coils.

Mandibles Shotglass

During my parents' most recent visit to Tucson, my father came with me to the studio.  He made two clay objects and I made this very simple, very small slab pot.

Silverfish 1 and Chamsa 89

I had hoped this combination of glazes would come out as a slightly glittery, matte off-white, but it's definitely blue.  I don't like this silverfish enough to be disappointed, but I'm going to look into other options for the second silverfish sculpture.  This sculpture is twice the length of the source image, but the width is the same.  It makes the legs and antennae look distorted.

I used the same glaze combination ("Dry Matte Turquoise" over "Pussywillow") for Chamsa 89.

Horned Devotion Cup 1

I recently sold a sculpture called the Horned Devotion.  The buyer said she was using it as a ring holder, which never would have occurred to me.  I was intending to make another, similar sculpture and produced a series of cups instead.  This is the first one.  The molds on the side come from resin Halloween decorations.

Fifteen-Eyed Pot

This pot was originally meant to be part of the Aberrant Meercat Pot.  I meant for it to start out wide at the base, then get smaller, and then widen again, but it didn't look like the pot would support the weight of the sculpted head on top of it.  I added a thick strip of clay to the narrow part, but I decided to make another pot with straight walls to use with the meercat sculpture.  This is the reject.  I covered it with a pattern of eyes and spent four hours glazing it.  I like how it came out, but it's still a reject.

Return to Opabinia Island

I already did an Opabinia post in 2010, but it came up in a Deviantart conversation and I took some better pictures.  Opabinia is a bizarre fossil invertebrate with five eyes from the Burgess Shale.

This is my second Opabinia.  It's 11 inches long.  I made it some time between 2004 and 2006.

This is my first Opabinia.  It was one of my earliest clay pieces.  The snout broke off and I glued it back on.

Doll Face Scrap Object

Thou shalt not waste clay doll heads.

Thirteen-Eyed Pot

This is a hand-built slab pot with thirteen green eyes.  It's a sequel to my Eleven-Eyed Pot, which sold last month.

Another Silverfish WIP

Tonight I made a second silverfish sculpture.  This one has the dimensions of the source drawing doubled.  It's about 15.5 by 7.7 cm.

Finished Silverfish 2 Sculpture

Zebra Devotion

A few years ago, I made a series of macabre (or comical, depending on your sense of humor) sculptures called "Devotions" intended as Halloween decorations.  They've been selling nicely on Etsy so I continued the series.  I was going to call this one the Scorpion Devotion, but I've since settled on Zebra Devotion.

Tardigrade Empty Nest Syndrome

Finished Tardigrade 4 Sculpture

My good news for today is that my remaining tardigrade sculpture finally sold.  I'm preemptively staving off Tardigrade Empty Nest Syndrome by starting a new series of tardigrade sculptures.  The one I sold had claws on its legs, as real tardigrades do, but they were too thin and some of them broke off (which was of course disclosed in the Etsy listing and blamed on the effects of coming out of vacuum hibernation).  This one has cut-out claws, which looks a little clunkier, but will hopefully fare better on its transition out of vacuum hibernation. 

Damn You, Tentacles (Chwidencha WIP)

I've been wanting to make a chwidencha for a while.  A chwidencha is a Dungeons & Dragons monster resembling several layers of spider legs.  The name is presumably onomatopoeic: the sound of the thing scuttling along the floor towards you in the dark.  I looked up the anatomy of the spider leg.  As the title character explained in Charlotte's Web, spider legs have 7 parts:  coxa, trochanter, femur, patella, tibia, metatarsus, and tarsus.  I tried to show the parts in this sculpture, but they came out looking more like tentacles and less like segmented legs.  Damn you, tentacles, you're so fucking easy to make out of clay that you're ruined me for segmented legs forever.

Cthulhu Idol #7

I've been alternately calling these "Cthulhu Idols,"  "Cthulhu Religious Objects," and "Cthulhuines."  This is the seventh in the series.