Sculpture and change(Blogpost#5)

My clay sculpture (the word Allah/god in Arabic)

Through my sculpture project with clay I explored the artist behavior "Artist Develop Art making Skills". I know most people have used clay before, like in middle school, but since I never really got that opportunity, working with clay was a new experience for me which I learned alot from.The first thing I learned was that you need to air out your clay before using it and that  you need ventilation holes on your sculpture.Luckily I was able to make my holes at the bottom of the sculpture where it was't very visible.The other technique I applied was similar to cross hatching on the edges of the three pieces of clay which I wanted to join together then squeezing over them so they kind merge and become one piece. My clay sculpture is a one piece sculpture but when I was making it I had to make it in 3 different parts then join them together (with the help of that technique) so it looks like one.

An old clay sculpture
made for a goddess

The second art behavior I used through my artwork was "Artist Communicate Through their work".When I was thinking of ideas for my clay sculpture, I was amazed by how oldern civilizations had used clay to make statues for their gods.I thought that was a cool idea and that I wanted to communicate my beliefs through clay in a a similar way, so I decided that my sculpture would be the Arabic word for "Allah", the god I believe in. This idea allowed me to express my personal beliefs and my artwork reflects upon what I value.

My sculpture- broken in half!

The third artistic behavior was "Artists Slove Problems". When I was planning out my sculpture I decided that I wanted my sculpture to be able to stand up straight in the end. My idea was that once I made the word I would attach a base ( kinda like the ones that are on the bottom of trophies) to the bottom of the word. However when I finished making the word I saw that I wouldn't  have enough clay for that and decided  against it. Instead it just made the bottom side of the word flat and reckoned that it would stand. Looking back on this now, I do wish I'd made the base because the sculpture doesn't really stand. Another mistake I made was putting it in my bag to bring it home, thinking that because it wasn't round or anything, it wouldn't break.Wrong again!It did break but I fixed it up with some rubber cement glue. Although my mistakes may seem trivial, I've realized that as an artist you need to be careful with how practical you make your artwork (whether it can stand or not)and you should be careful with handling it too.