Week 4

This past week I started on the soda fire project. I made a few forms on the wheel. Two are very random and essentially fails, but there are three that were normal. However, when trimming today I messed up one of the three normal ones. I spent class time today applying terrasig to the animated forms I created out of terracotta the week before. Terrasig is the weirdest thing I have ever seen. It's very interesting to apply, make, and feel. It's mind blowing how smooth and shiny it is. You can see in the pictures below that the burnished terrasig looks like it's still wet, but it is soft and dry to the touch. 

I am interested to see what will happen once it is fired in the pit. I've seen the terrasig on other fired objects, but not from a pit fire. I will apply terrasig to my relief panels, but it was not bone dry yet. I am hoping that it will be bone dry by next class, but I highly doubt it. The clay was very thick and I cannot imagine it drying out that fast after I totally unwrapped it today. Taking the pieces out of the wood panel was absolutely disgusting. There was the brightest green mold I've ever seen between the tiles of clay and all over the bottom of the board. When I flipped over the board there was an orange and white substance on that side of the wood that the clay wasn't even touching. I brought it home thinking I would throw it under my bed and save it for another day, but paranoia and my germophobe tendencies got the better of me and the wood panel now sits in the dumpster. Not to worry because if I ever need another panel to pound a slab out in I can just grab one of the painting panels I made last summer.