Coiled Terra Cotta Clay Pumpkins

Seventh graders spent a couple of weeks in October perfecting their clay coil rolling skills in this project... it's a difficult skill to learn and it takes lots of practice. Coils need to be consistent in thickness and not lumpy from the pressure of rolling in order to create nice, even vessels. In this case, the vessels we made are pumpkins, using low-fire red terra cotta clay. Some are large, some small, some have jack-o-lantern faces and some don't, but all are fun and well made!
Students were also given the choice to leave their bisque fired pieces as is, or they could glaze them with a color or shiny clear overglaze. The pumpkins that have faces carved out also contain an LED tea light which makes them even cooler!

 The final pieces! It's hard to tell the scale of them in these photos, but hopefully you can see that by looking at some of the photos above of kids working...

How they look illuminated:

After Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist living in Scotland who produced site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. His art involves the use of natural and found objects to create both temporary and permanent sculptures which draw out the character of their environment. He explore and experiments with various natural material such as leaves, grasses, stones, wood, sand, clay, ice and snow. The seasons and weather determine the materials and the subject matter of his projects. With no preconceived ideas about what he will create, Goldsworthy relies on what nature will give him. Goldsworthy "feels" the energy from nature and transcends that energy into an art form.

Inspired by the work of Goldsworthy and the vivid colors seen around the Calvert campus with the change of the season, seventh grade artists also created temporary artworks using natural objects. Like Goldsworthy, we used photography as a form of documentation to capture the essence of the artworks.

Here are some photos of students at work:

 And the final work:

Monster Mugs

5th grade students in Ceramics class rolled clay slabs using rolling pins and wooden slats to create these mug forms and handles. They then added animal/human/alien features to their mugs and later glazed them to create these colorful, usable mugs!