The Darth Vader Pot That Wasn't

I bought this strange object at a thrift store last year.  It looks like a Mr. Potato Head or anthropomorphized M&M version of Darth Vader, with all the facial features missing, but with a nicely formed helmet.  I attempted a Darth Vader pot a few years ago and it didn't survive.  I managed to make a small flowerpot with simplified helmet and features, but it wasn't what I wanted.  This time, I tried to use the helmet from this thing as a mold.  It didn't work and I ended up destroying the whole pot.  It was about half a bag (ten dollars worth) of clay and about three days' work, but the disappointing part is finding something that I can't make out of clay.  Why should Darth Vader's helmet be so difficult?

Unfortunately I didn't document the process of the failed Darth Vader pot, but this what I made tonight after I destroyed it.  One of my Halloween Devotion statues from 2011 sold on Etsy so I thought I would make another one.

New Cthulhu Religious Objects, Part 2

These are Cthulhu Idols 4 and 5 from my second set of Cthulhu Religious Objects.  There is one more, but it lost a few extremities.  I glued them back on and I'm going to paint it with acrylic paints.


Cthulhu Idol #4

My other recent Cthulhu figures have had outlines for eyes, but no details.  This one has slightly more detailed eyes and I think it gives it a lot more personality.  It also looks a little cartoonish and I'm guessing that your average Cthulhu cultist might prefer something a little more crude and disturbing, but nevertheless I think this is the template I was looking for.

The view from the front doesn't really work.

Cthulhu Idol #5

Ah, crudité crudity.  This is more likely to be what you find in the secret shrine in a Cthulhu worshiper's basement.

Warthog Pot Top and Bottom

This five-piece Aberrant Warthog Pot is my penultimate piece from 2012.  The top and bottom made it into the glaze kiln, but the three middle pieces are still waiting in line.  I love the way the sculpted warthog itself came out.  I like how the white glaze shows through the darker red-brown glaze.  I like how life-like (if unwarthoglike) the eyes came out.  The coil pot that makes up the base, however, looks extremely primitive and the other pieces are not much better.

New Cthulhu Religious Objects, Part 1

These are clay representations of Great Cthulhu, the octopus-headed god-monster invented by H.P. Lovecraft.

They are intended to be the kind of primitive religious objects that your average Cthulhu cultist might keep around the house for day-to-day worship rather than images of the fictional character of Cthulhu Itself.

Cthulhu Idol #1

Cthulhu Idol #2

Cthulhu Idol #3

Here they are all together:

Zebrafish Larvae

These are sculptures inspired by a photograph of two zebrafish larvae.

Zebrafish Larva 1:

 

Zebrafish Larva 2:

The two Zebrafish Larvae sculptures together and the original image by Jürgen Berger and Mahendra Sonawane of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology.

Dumbo Octopus WIP

Finished version of Dumbo Octopus

Second Set of Black Ghosts / Metachamsas

These are small clay objects made from the outlines of the fingers of chamsas.  I've been calling them black ghosts, but I may want to make some with glazes other than black, so I'm renaming them metachamsas.

Aberrant Giraffe Pot

I modeled this sculptural pot after a piece that I made in 2010.  It was one of my favorite pieces at the time and was badly damaged when a shelf collapsed.  It came out like some kind of unnatural human were-giraffe, hence the name: Aberrant Giraffe Pot.  The functional part of this piece is a hand-built coil/slab pot.

 

The Giraffe Column of 2010:

Pre-disaster:

and Now:

Giraffe-Goat Sculpture

After the Aberrant Giraffe Pot came out slightly less giraffe-like than I had been hoping, I obtained a plastic giraffe bust from a dollar store to use as a model.  I was disappointed to find that it came out looking more like a goat than a giraffe.  It was later pointed out to me that the model does look more like a spotted goat than a giraffe.  Giraffes have more elongated faces.  The sculpture also lost a horn in the bisque kiln.

The model giraffe-goat:

Pelican Sculpture

I received a lovely plastic figure of a pair of pelicans seated on a stack of books and inaccurate globes as a gift and used it as a model for this sculpture.

The source object:

Tully Monster

This is a clay interpretation of the fossil organism known as the Tully monster.  The Tully monster is the state fossil of Illinois, the only place it has been found.  The fossil is not well enough preserved to clearly place the animal in any extant phylum.

An artist's depiction of the Tully monster:

Despite the way the name sounds, Tully monster was not a character on Sesame Street. 

Space Coyote 5

Chef Objects

These objects are made from press molds of the faces of two grotesque dollar store chef figurines.

These are the two source objects.  The chef in the white suit is missing a hand, so I was only charged $0.50.  The chef in red reminds me of the baby mask worn by Michael Palin in Brazil.