finally

Upon my return from California, I found that only four of my ten large boxes survived the bisque firing. It was really a blessing in disguise since I landed at 2 am and the final glaze firing was set for 11 am. After catching a few hours of sleep, I spend the rest of the morning glazing my boxes. For the large ones, I designed and cut out a stencil to make the process faster, then used a black under-glaze to paint in the penciled areas. After adding a clear glaze and deciding just to dip all of my little boxes in some sort of blue (I honestly had no idea how it would turn out), I loaded the last kiln of the quarter and hoped for the best. And somehow, the best happened.

hooray!

Apparently the black under-glaze is composed of some cobalt, so the design turned blue in firing—perfectly complimenting my little boxes, which fired brilliantly! I guess I completely lost control of my project—of all the details I wanted to go just perfectly. I thought I failed, not literally like an F in the class, but just failed to fulfill my specifications and failed at a medium of art. Which, yes, compared to my original plans the finals fails to fulfill those expectations, but hello…welcome to ceramics. Today, I was pleasantly surprised—no, more like ecstatic—when I saw my pieces. I’m actually excited to hang them and look at them frequently, thankful to consider this quarter both extremely frustrating and surprisingly successful.

I'm considering hanging them above my bed...or maybe in the kitchen....or my bathroom.
I have a lot of undecorated wall space.