Category: Ceramics

I firstly needed to think about my audience and what type of product I was going to sell. I thought about how events like Earth Jam, Autumn Fest, and Winter Market, all had very similar items: crocheted items, prints, clothes, and jewelry. I wanted to avoid going into an oversaturated market, so I didn’t want to make jewelry if possible. I thought about the current fashion trend of wearing a carabiners and thought that those people must need something more than just keys to put on them. That’s how I arrived at the keychain idea.

When I considered what charms to add to the keychains, I thought to myself well I’m a college student, what would I want to buy?, and that’s basically how I went about this. I made a paint tube for art kids, tomatoes and a fish for the nature type folk, and matching people charms that could be used as BFF keychains. Most of the adornments are unique to one another so the customer will feel more special and feel as they are getting something more personalized. I also threw in a couple quick-to-make abstract charm adornments for time constraints I might face. These keychains would also be occasionally paired with other strings of fabric to make the piece less simple and more dynamic.

I first started off by using the low-fire clay just because I missed the announcement where we were told we could use high-fire. I soon discovered that the low-fire clay was extremely hard to sculpt on a small scale. That’s why you see all of the basic bead looking charms done with low-fire. The most complicated thing I made with the low-fire clay was the orchid, which might have even been easier to create than the sharp leaves of the tomatoes. The high-fire clay was much more cooperatable and forgiving, I was able to smooth edges much better too. After a leaf broke off one of the tomatoes, I gave myself some room to be able to ditch a charm or two by making a couple more than needed.

For glazes, I kept my color pallet simple, Taking advantage of the already made opal blue high-fire glaze to expedite the process. Unfortunately, I could not come up with up with a good enough pink in time which was truly devastating. I used blues, greens, and black and white instead which I guess work just as good.

Most of the low-fire charms weren’t loaded into the kiln despite having put them on a shelf so I didn’t end up having

ten pieces in the end. This was disappointing since I couldn’t possibly make up for that since it was the last fire of the semester. However, I worked with what I got. I think I could have been more carful checking if there was glaze in the holes before I had loaded them into the kiln because a few of the pieces’ holes were glazed shut so I had to super glue the string instead of simply threading it through and tying it. I thought I had checked the pieces pretty well beforehand but I suppose I might have forgotten to do a double check which could have saved me a lot of time (and money since I had to buy the super glue). Making the strings/chains of the keychains was actually pretty fun too. I used some old lace I had lying around and some embroidery thread that I thrifted for a different project in the past. I just took the thread, folded it in half, twirled them together, and they naturally twist themselves in the middle to create that sturdy string. This added to the piece a lot because it gave me a chance to introduce or repeat colors into the charms.

Cost

If I were to continue making these pieces and sell them for profit, I would need to price these adornments at $37.60 each to make livable wage. This doesn’t include one time purchases like superglue for a quick fix or things like studio equipment/studio subscription. If I would to do this over a long period of time, presumably my speed at which I could make these products would increase, so I could use less time to make them, sell more for a cheaper price, and therefore sell more, and make more. This would be ideal anyway since my target audience at the moment are college students.

	Products in bulk:	Per adornment:
Estimated average cost of high-fire clay:	$2.60 (1 lb)	$0.26 (given estimated weight is 1.6 ounces)
Keychain hooks:	$5.00 (70 pc)	$0.07
Thread:	$2.00	$0.01
Labor time:	—	$37.17 (1.5 hrs, livable wage in NH)
Total costs:	$9.60 + livable wage	$37.60

Audio

Transcript

SLIDE 1-2

Kathy Butterly was born in 1963 in Amityville NY. She graduated from Moore College of Art – located in PA in 1986 with her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She then received her Master of Fine Arts at University of California in 1990. 

SLIDE 3

Butterly studied with Robert Arneson who was a funk art and nut art sculptor. Arneson, like Butterly, had also studied at University of California. He later became a ceramics professor there for nearly three decades.

SLIDE 4

Another artist Kathy Butterly is associated with, is her husband Tom Burckhardt, who does abstraction and figuration paintings. They both have a studio in Maine where they split their time between NYC and the rural environment.

“‘The light in Maine is just so beautiful,’ says artist Kathy Butterly…‘You see more of the sky here than in New York. You’re very acutely aware of the elements.’” adds Tom Burckhardt.

SLIDE 5

Here are just some more photos of their studio in Maine, on the bottom left you will see some paintings by Tom Burckhardt.

 “Contradictions are important to my work, and these two polar opposite places are real influences,” says Kathy. “In New York, I absorb the intense energies, the graffiti, the sounds. In Maine, I have a garden and watch bulbs develop and bees pollinate. I observe how petals glow like the glazes I use—how insane colors are in nature!”

SLIDE 6

As an undergrad at Moore College Art and Design, Butterly thought that she would be an oil painter. 

“The pieces I had been exposed to were mostly utilitarian and ‘earthy.’ I wanted to make art that conveyed ideas”

That was until she saw a sculpture exhibition in 1984 by Viola Frey. Who was a painter and drawing in addition to sculptor. Renowned for her large and colorful glazed clay sculptures of people. This nontraditional, boundary pushing style is what sparked Butterly’s work.

“I saw how ceramic materials could resolve my need to work both two- and three-dimensionally,” says Kathy. “Clay is such an expressive material.”

SLIDE 7-10

Butterly uses a variety of muses today including but not limited to children’s toys, pop culture, dolls, asian culture, and the body. Butterly’s work often explores the female figure and the stereotypes and expectations that come with it. The vessel’s contortions, bulges, and lumpy midrifts make it impossible to use as a functional mug or cup. They resist the expected purpose of the vessel. Demonstrating Butterly’s strength in conceptual and abstract ideas. 

Kathy Butterly creates vases and vessels that stand no taller than 12 inches. She tends to create sculptures closer to 6 inches though to be able to create intimate, complex pieces. She starts with a simple porcelain slip cast form, then pokes holes and folds in the walls of the form. She then will often decorate the exterior with ropes of porcelain or carefully crafted beads.

These sculptures are presented on colorful pedestals or plinths to support the even more vibrant forms. Butterly’s color usage is something she is known for. Using vibrant colors resembling those from mid-century modern. A style which highlights clean lines, and organic shapes. The reason for her remarked use of color becomes clear when you realize the tedious work she puts into the layers. To achieve the iconic painterly effect on the surface of the piece, Butterly will fire and layer glazes on her works up to 40 times.  

As Butterly works on each piece, she allows the materials and her creative flow drive her the process so each vessel is unique. 

SLIDE 11-12

I admire how Butterly leans into the concept of imperfection. She uses the flaws of her art like errant firing to her advantage. Going with the flow and being flexible with “happy accidents” in art is something I try to improve on. Of course not just in craft but conceptually too; she extinguishes any expectations a viewer might have of her ceramics.

Her work being as conflicting and complex as it is, truly inspires me to do the same in my art work. It made me realize that my ideas don’t need to be fully flushed out to express myself. They merely need to create a spark or opportunity for the audience to feel conflicted or seen through the contradictory.

I’m inspired by Butterly’s artwork mostly from her use of pallet. She uses a wide range of colors that are bright and playful. Lately I’ve really liked the concept of embracing femininity in my artwork; Butterfly does a beautiful job at this, with the usage of pink alongside the lace-like elements that resemble small strings of pearls. 

SLIDE 13

I’ll leave you with a quote from Kathy Butterly that might resonate, “Currently, I’m thinking a lot about the environment and politics and society—how messed up it all is, yet also how beautiful it is, too,” she says. “There are always dualities.”

SLIDE 14

Thank you.

Of course I started off the project by throwing ten bowls. It was my second or third time using the wheel and I had noticed some pain in my right wrist. I had broken a part of my wrist when I was a kid and realized that may be the cause of my pain. I had to spend some time figuring out a way to cone and shape the clay in a way that didn’t strain my wrist which was definitely a challenge during the whole process.

produced. In the picture only one of them is trimmed, but I made sure to trim all of them even if I was using them for the vessels as I thought that would help me align the centers better.

To get started on the next step, I picked four bowls that related most to each other in size and form to be my four final bowls. Once I had those picked out I used the rest to make the vessels. I took the three smallest bowls and decided to make a vessel with those first. Out of the three, I picked two bowls with about the same circumference and stuck them together by the rims to make a closed form. There was some wrestling I had to do with the clay to get the rims to stick together just right as they weren’t perfectly the same size as each other. They fit relatively well however, and I was able to polish it up well by trimming it again on the wheel.

Then I got started on the handle of the vessel. I deconstructed the remaining bowl and was inspired by the wheel-like shape it created. I thought it would be a shame to not take advantage of the already circular slab I accidentally created. So, I trimmed this slab into a thin curved coil, then I diagonally wrapped it around the vessel. While I did this I used newspaper in between the handle and walls of the form to keep the handle suspended in the air while I shaved away and shaped it. Then I just added a flare on top to decorate it.

The last thing I did was create the whole into the neck of the vessel. I wanted to do this last so that the

form wouldn’t dent or fold into itself while I worked on it. I basically was working with a balloon that allowed the air inside to keep equal pressure to the walls of the form. I learned this trick on my first ceramic piece and it’s definitely come in handy in handy since. I used the wheel again for subtractive methods to carve out the neck so that the rim was equal in volume all around.

Once I finished sculpting the first vessel I started on the second. The remaining three bowls I had to work with didn’t cooperate well together, they were too different in size to make anything out of them. So I decided to scrap using those bowls and make new ones. Now that I was going to create bowls with the specific intention of making a vessel out of them, I put a lot more thought into the shapes of them. I create a few sketches of what type of vessel I wanted that guided my throwing process (see right page of notebook). I knew I wanted something botanical and have a place to attach string of non ceramics charms to it that mimicked water or dew dripping.

After I had made the two bowls I had to then conjoin them together. I was working on a time crunch and the air vent wasn’t working at this time, so the most I could do was wait for the clay to partly dry and work on the flower part of the handle in the meantime. However, I still had to add the bowls together while they were still very wet. Luckily, the form didn’t cave in on itself too much. I also decided to trim the closed form on the wheel while it was still wet. I think this expedited process worked well in this case but if the form was any bigger or thinner, there could have been backlash in my attempt to speed up the process.

Since the vessel wasn’t as tall as my sketches, I redrew it, this time accurate to width and height as the vessel I made (see left page of notebook). I made an option if I were to flip it either way to see which I liked better. Once I decided on which way I wanted it to go, I added a coil for the handle that wrapped all the way around the vessel. I used the newspaper technique once again to hold it in place. Adding in the floral decorative piece I worked on while the bowls were drying, was one of the more difficult parts of the process. The flower was crumbling and falling apart as I was trying to adhere it to the slip and scored area. I had to use a column

of wet clay to hold up the flower while it dried. Then once it was leather hard, I realized I forgot to add a hole in the flower for the string of beads to hang from, so in the process of adding that, it broke again. I must have reconstructed it about four times before it stayed. I was sure it was going to break in the kiln.

I think what contributes to what makes these pieces dynamic are the handles that can be seen from all angles of the piece. They both create interesting focal points at the end of the handles. The first vessel’s hovers

above the visually dominated element of the round bottom. This gives it great contrast since the focal point is much smaller in scale to the rest of it. However, the base of the vessel is also quite small, so it creates a high contested, yet balanced visual for the viewer. The second vessel, although the focal point is close to the visually dominated area of the piece, has gestural lines created by the handle that act as an arrow that lead your eye out from the rim of the vessel down and up away from the established element of dominance.

Overall, I think these pieces work really well as a series. They both are closed forms that have organic handles that wrap around the vessel. If I were to continue this series I would definitely keep trying to add height and more elaborate botanical handles.