Puzzle Box

For my project I was inspired by my Mom's puzzle box that my dad got her in Costa Rica a million years ago. I have been obsessed with this jewelry box since I was a kid and I knew I wanted to do something similar to this design for this project.

 I love the idea of multiple parts within the box working together to conceal what is inside. I think its cool that you have to think about how the box gets taken a part to reveal what is inside and you have to work to put it back together.

I hope that with my box I can emulate a similar complex design that is bigger in size and has a more curvy shape.

The Box

I struggled all of last week trying to find inspiration for this project and then had a very tough weekend. I'm coach high school girls soccer and on Saturday we had our first playoff game and my starting defender was nowhere to be found. After making multiple unanswered calls to both her and her legal guardian I was contacted 10 minutes before game time and informed that my girl overdosed on alcohol Friday night and was found at 4am that morning unconscious in the middle of the road in one of the worst parts of town in Yakima, where I live. This was going to be her first game back after recovering from a concussion and her overdose and falling and hitting her head when she passed out caused swelling in her brain and she was sedated for 16 hours. Having to visit one of my favorite kids in the hospital and seeing the girl that always comes to practice with the biggest smile on her face and a good and encouraging attitude at practice day in and day out, strapped down to a hospital bed and sedated broke my heart. I soon found out that this was her second attempt in the last month to kill herself and I couldn't believe that this kid of all people was so broken inside. She's a beautiful girl with one of the best spirits I've ever been around and I feel like most people who know this kid would see her big smile and never give a second thought to the pain behind it. I want my box to provoke discussion on mental health. I plan to have the exterior sides be very clean and potentially have a floral pattern. Something light and pretty to distract from the mess within. I was the inside of the box to gives the illusion of it splitting at the seems and I was to do some chaotic carving on the inside of the box. I want it to show an internal struggle that can easily be overlooked because of the beauty that meets the eye on the exterior.

This is work from a local artist, Bernadette Crider. She's the woman who first taught me how to throw and I love this lidded casserole form and I think her Ginko Leaf carving detail is beautiful.





These are pieces by Martha Grover and I love the bottoms of a lot of her jars and boxes because they come up around the rest of the vessel and I would like the try this technique with more of a floral quality

Opening up

For my project, I want to create a box that focuses on concealing than revealing the object inside. I designed this box with my wedding proposal in mind. Before I was engaged I was in a place in which I could not freely be myself; I had to hide my love from the world. After being engaged, I was in a new environment that celebrated my relationship openly. I designed the box so the top section is a stopper to hold the four walls up and when removed the flower form opens to reveal the ring inside. I was inspired by the box bellow but could not find the artist who created the piece. I had many concerns with the structural integrity and would have liked to read about the artist’s process. I also drew inspiration from Marianne Nielsen who creates realistic flower forms out of ceramics. If the four separate walls do not work out, I will merge them into a lid that can pull out from the center of the flower. I would like to create a box that you would not instantly know how to open. 

Le Box

For this assignment I am continuing the fish scale inspired surface work that I have been doing but I want to push it even more with this project and make it more insteresting and challenging. I will be combining both subtractive and additive technques to create an organic yet unnaturally busy surface. For the lid I want to make a fitted puzzle top like the ones Stephen showed in the demo.

Dandee Pattee - I just enjoy how rounded and organic her pieces look. I want my overall shape to have the same softness


Stephen Robison - This is the type of lid I want to make and I also enjoy the added organic forms on top.


Alisa Holen - I love the texture that she puts on her peices and how plump and organic the forms feel.




Tara Wilson


I'll put my sketches on here soon

Some tea canisters

Initially, I started off as I typically do, thinking about the endless topics that I feel strongly about, but of which few, I am compelled to respond to through my art work. Then I came to this thought where I wanted to create a piece that had no concept behind it other than it being a practical piece that was made for a purpose that spoke to the desires of those who I am closest with...that can be summed up on one short word: tea. See, I live for tea and the opportunity to drink tea over a great conversation...so I wanted to make "boxes" that would reference tea. What better containers than loose leaf tea canisters?

Rather than making one container, I will be making a series of three small-medium size canisters that will have a lid, created so that the tea will not grow stale. Unlike the photo pictured to the right, I do not want the canisters to be uniform in shape. Likely, they will have a painted design parallel with each other and be different forms. I hope for these forms to be delicate pieces with a great deal of detail painted once glazed. 

I plan to use terracotta to create these pieces because I think it will be an effective material while using the tin-based glaze and various under glazes to add detail and dimension to these pieces. I am currently unsure of the style of lids I hope to utilize, but will research demos and more information regarding what creates the best seal to store foods in while still ensuring that the piece looks finished and the lid does not look too utilitarian that it detracts from the fragility and ornamentation shown in these pieces. 

Though I am not making a teapot, I am crazy about the lid on this pot, I think that it is beautifully cohesive with the rest of the form, which is something that I hope to captivate in these canisters...I want whatever lid that I design to look like it's supposed to be there: an ambitious journey I am sure to embark on seeing as I have not yet made a lid. But I am excited, surely. 

-O.D.

Kirsten Cox >>> Box

When I envisioned the box I would created I wanted to create a box that The purpose instead of just holding things. so my box will be a out-of-sight out-of-mind charging station for my phone. There are many of us that struggle with constantly having our phones in our hands and even when it's plugged in constantly checking it. Facebook the only way hide my phone visually but aesthetically not remind me my phone is in there, hopefully.

I chose this box by Joanna Howells for the style and structure, taller like I want and the unique corners she created.

Title: Chun 'Pillow' Box

Artist: Joanna Howells

Date: 2008

Technique: Thrown & Altered

Temperature: Cone 10

Glazing / Surface Treatment: gas reduction fired | glaze

Material: Stoneware

Object Type: Lidded Jar

Height: 12 | Width: 12 | Depth: 12

License: Attribution License

This jar inspired me for the texture that has been created and it's non uniform colors space. I also would like to create a similar bottom.

Title: Anagama jar

Artist: Richard Burkett

Date: 2004

Technique: Thrown

Temperature: Cone 12

Glazing / Surface Treatment: Woodfire

Material: Porcelain

Object Type: Lidded Jar

Height: 8 | Width: 7 | Depth: 7

License: Attribution-NoDerivs License

Ring box ideas

For this project I plan to construct a box for a set of gold silver and copper rings that I am in the process of creating. I was drawn to the idea of some kind of stacking box by the Three tier staking box created by Hayne Bayless.  Additionally the cylindrical forms of both  Joanna Howell's Floe and Snowfrack by Peter Biddulph appealed to me as an efficient shape and an intelligent method to build vertically.              The conceptual goal of the box is to cover and protect the rings of gold and silver while intentionally leaving the rings of copper exposed. The box itself is going to serve as a demonstration of the internal objects value. beyond just this i would like the compartments of the box to be of the correct sizing for each of the individual rings. So Im thinking along the lines of some kind of vertical stacking shape with handles on each level for easy access.

Skin bags, amirite?

Hey so I couldn't figure out how to rotate the picture so just turn your entire computer on it's side and then you'll get a sense of what I'm dealing with right now. I'm going to try to tie this piece into the painting I'm currently working on and explore just how gross and uncomfortable I can really get. I want to create movement with this piece that just makes people uncomfortable with putting things in it. 

 

I feel like I'm channeling my inner Jason Briggs but I'm kind of using this piece also as a study to hone my carving and my understanding of how the body works and how I can make it work to my taste.

Choices, Choices, Choices...

My idea is a simple box, but with buttonns/buzzers on top on some of the sides. I am inspired by the containment aspect of concepts. One of the most common themes I have been seeing lately in shows, video games, and other media is a focus on Mind Games or emotional blackmail. Jail/Prison is also a prominent theme in News and Fiction television right now as well.
So I took the "Prisoner's Dilemma" game/experiment and came up with this idea. This could be a device model where you press the buttons depending on the choice you wish to make. The bottom will come off to show you the rules of the game and the consequences and rewards of what combination of choices could mean.

 These boxes by Betsy Williams were also an inspiration because they are not very lavish or ornate, but still beautiful and meaningful, which I want to be with my piece.

 This Japanese piece gave me the inspriation to make a Buzzer/Button box system. It has a similar shape, but with the opposite concept and visual meanings. (Artist: Workshop of Nonomura Ninsei (Japanese, active ca. 1646–94)

 

My biggest draw and where my idea stems from is the Zero Escape Game Series by Kotaro Uchikoshi. These games use Prisoner's Dilemma, Schrodinger's cat (my original plan, but did not know how to not make it cheesy), Time Shifting, and other such ideals to try and show the dark side of human morality.  

seed pod:by Ying-Yueh Chaung 

Although this is not a box, I really like the way the floral form interacts with the spherical one.

Michelle Tobia uses multiple objects to create on piece and I really enjoy that element of the Drift1


Through thought and creative processes I came up with the idea of making a box with a flower on top (isn't everyone super surprised?!) and then making individual leaves that can be arraigned around said box. My reasoning for this project: YOLO

Centerpiece stuff

I am doing a piece based on my German last name Mohn, meaning poppy. I looked at German vases for inspiration for the form of my object. They tend to be cylindrical, sometimes possesing slight curves.
West German Vase
I like the silhouette of this vase as well as the surface treatment.
Rosenthal, Germany
This vase also has a nice silhouette that lends to the sense of fragility the piece has.

This is my original sketch of my idea, though it has evolved over the process of actually making the piece.

Center Piece-Negative Space

After looking at several images on the internet I knew that I wanted to experiment with different ways to incorporate negative space into bowl shapes while still having the same function as a bowl container. Unfortunately, this experimentation is quite time consuming and not reliable for having an end result. However, for my center piece I was inspired by the following images:


My original plan for my center piece did not work out due to broken pieces and time constraints, but I am still hoping to create a center piece that includes a play on negative space and organic/art nuveau designs.

Sex: What is was and what it's become

The idea for this piece stems from the initial analysis of the way that sex has been viewed by the masses over a progression of time. There have been such important benchmarks over the years that have dictated the public's presumption of what sex means, what its purpose is, and the actions taken in response.

This piece will include narrative sections that visually explain some of those benchmarks such as the implementation of the scarlet letter during Puritan days, the shock "therapy" performed on gay folks before it was no longer deemed a mental illness, the first marks of sex in classic literature, and more. Aside from these elements added to the vase, the form itself will be very simplified, a smooth vertical form that briefly alludes to an abstracted phallic form, without being like "hey here's a vase that looks like a penis!" The pieces that will be added to the vase with the imagery atop will be representative of isomers, thus they will be crafted hexagons. There will be other abstracted imagery on the vase that alludes to the cellular structure of a flower -- this connects to that idea of flowers and sex being intertwined...clearly there are a lot of connections happening with this vase, between different ideas, but it makes a great amount of sense to include those several ideas in this one vase.

The piece above is likely the form that I will be drawing inspiration from. I think that this would be the most dynamic once the hexagonal pieces are added to it -- they'll be right below the halfway point. This piece also references the shape of a tulip, which is a great way to tie in those cellular details that will be added later.I also really appreciate the form to the left and enjoy the way that is so simple and yet has so much character all at the same time.

Something crucial to keep in mind, is that on this piece, there will be hardly any detail on the surface of the vase, other than the hexagonal forms because so much attention will be paid to the painterly work that is executed in order to bring more life to the piece. 

These sketches (to the right) are representative of the basic ideas that I hope to execute on my vase...on the far page, there are some of the imagery that will be shown on the hexagonal forms, what represents the different views about sex over time. 



-- O.D.

Love without sex Center Peice

With my center piece, I am focusing on human sexuality and romance specifically the interesting roles they have upon each other.  In our society, it is common for people to engage in sex without love but when there is romance without sex people react with utter confusion. My centerpiece will be split into two pieces the heart vase and the vagina stand, the two can be separated to show loves independence from sex. Romance can exist without intercourse and passion without penetration.

I found inspiration from Cynthia Consentino’s Madonna series where she breaks down gender roles and the idolization of sex. She incorporates the virgin Mary with many different items in pop culture including the vagina. I was also inspired by Jemma Millen’s work with hyper-realistic heart forms in porcelain.