Elizabeth Opalek
Presenting:
Thrown Ceramics
This is an incomplete collection of the pieces I created during a semester long ceramics class, focused on pottery thrown on the wheel.
I also experimented with the Nerikomi technique, which is where multiple colors of clay are marbled together and then thrown. I created my own colored clay using frost porcelain and a variety of pigments. This required a lot of math to get my pigments to be consistent through my tests! Some of these pieces can be seen in the Gallery section.
I experimented a lot with shape and balance in my thrown pieces, as can be shown in the pictures below. The star-shaped bowl was thrown as one piece, and the outer bowl was pinched in to create the distinctive star shape. In the creation of the red and white mug, I really wanted to focus on the circular nature of the handle, to the point a cookie cutter was used to create it. The sharp line of glaze is to emphasize the geometric nature of it. Several of the other pieces were experiments with glaze, with multiple layers being used in both of the blue pots on the left to create the spotted texture. The watercolor effect below was created with a simple coat of white with light finger smudges of other colors added on top. The face was an experiment with the viscosity of the molten glaze, to see how it might run down the piece.
