Sandwiches, Dainties, and sh*t clay

February was a month. Somehow the shortest month always seems like it spans the length of three or four. I honestly found that nothing I was making excited me - I was mid way through teaching two classes and my own work just wasn’t speaking to me anymore. Rather than force myself to make “exhibition” works (which I tried to do and ended up smashing them anyway) I let myself just play around with random ideas that I’ve had for a while. 

porcelain finger sandwiches (greenware)

I had an epiphany in February: I’m not in academia anymore. Not everything I make has to be “for the show” at the end of this residency. Not everything has to be serious, or well-thought-out. I can just make the silly things that I always put off for when I don’t have a show. 

I started making finger sandwiches and dainties, which may actually end up tying in nicely with the other work I’m making. Who says the final exhibition for this residency can’t have a few sandwiches in it, anyway?

"High tea" was common in my grandparents' generation. Little finger sandwiches and dainties (desserts that are cut into little squares and arranged onto assorted trays) would be arranged meticulously on china platters and tiered stands that women received at their weddings. These events/spreads are still popular - events like weddings and piano recitals will still feature finger sandwiches and dainty trays. 

dirt-chunk dainty tray (I'm still working on the title). It's a dainty tray but what if it was cubes of dirt.

While these finger sandwiches would be arranged in very pretty configurations on very pretty china (always with the goal that the queen would approve….why she would have opinions on the potluck spreads of a community in rural Manitoba is beyond me, but whatever) they almost always had bologna and kraft singles slices in them. The least fancy of the fancy foods. 

My plan is to soda fire the sandwiches and dainty squares that I’ve made. The sandwiches are made of porcelain so (hopefully) they’ll be a  warm off-white. I’ll use glazes and underglazes to colour the fillings to differentiate them. 

The dainties are made of what I’ve been calling my “NSCAD sh*t clay”. It’s a sculpture clay body that I made while I was in grad school, and I had something like 200-300 lbs of the stuff left over at the end of the program. No one else had any use for it (because in oxidation firings it looks kind of gross, and it also kind of sucks to work with) so I brought it to Alberta with me. Turns out it looks pretty nice in atmospheric firings: instead of a dull buff colour it flashes bright red and orange.

That’s all I’ve got for February. Thanks for reading : )