Making
I started to work with the clay, slowly modelling the walls and inner spaces. My idea was that one side of the house would be revealed – the wall missing and exposing these inner secrets. After a day working on one piece the cracks started to appear and I realised that this technique must be abandoned- or alternatively buy a different clay. I changed technique (too much of a waste not to use 5 bags of good quality porcelain clay) and started making slabs. The forms became much simpler and instead I focused my attention on varying them by how much was revealed. Some forms are fully sealed, others open at one end and others open and exposed from both sides. They are wall pieces. My plan is to make 50 or so separate pieces.
I have a few ideas about filling some of the houses with fragments of very thin clay like sheets of paper, painting the interiors with strong glowing colour, covering the walls with glitter…
I am keeping the pieces at a uniform state of dryness so that, when they are all completed, I will lay them all out in a formation on the floor and project an image onto them. I will then render this image in coloured slips. All the forms will then be dried and fired. After that I will consider using glazes or lustres to complete the pieces. The result will be that the pieces when shown together will create a single work and when each piece is bought it can be seen as a piece of a whole yet seen separately it is whole in its own right.
