Stacking JarsNEFTALI TORRES
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ARTIST STATEMENT
Flower Tower is a set of stoneware stacked jars with flower print in black and white. The jars were made on the wheel. The lids/ foot of the jar are also made by the wheel. The Glaze was clear glaze and jars were dipped into the glaze. What most influenced me about making this piece was my plants. When I am stressed and can’t handle life's pressures I like to turn to flowers and plants for a therapeutic calmness. Sadly I cannot take care of roses, daisies or orchids. A friend of mine gave me cacti plants and succulents. I thought that making these jars would be appropriate for my tiny plants.
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Instructor Resources
INSTRUCTOR
Tim Benson
Mission Hills High School
Neffie Torres’s piece titled, “Stacked Jars” was generated by a Sectional Vessel project in my Advanced Ceramics class at Mission Hills High School in the San Marcos Unified School District. The students in this class are grades 10-12 and are in their 2nd through 4th year of working with clay. The material focus of the class is predominantly clay, but students are welcome to bring in other materials and found objects when their project ideas warrant it.
The assignment involves an exploration of simple wheel-thrown forms as potential components in larger and more complex compositions. I show the students the works of Peter Volkous, Don Reitz, and Val Cushing and numerous others that employ a range of approaches to creating complex vessels from multiple component parts. This is also a project in which design and planning are particularly emphasized as they are critical to the efficient use of time and having the necessary parts from which to build larger pieces. Students must employ math and measurements in calculating shrinkage and measurements for forms that need to fit together later. Students must also grapple with mass, gravity and the physical limitations of clay as a material as well as the structural limitations of particular forms, curves and support structures.
Conceptually, students are asked to envision and critically think through the design process on paper before beginning to build. Asked to initially sketch multiple preliminary designs, students are then asked to use comparative judgement and to verbally justify their decisions in the language of three dimensional visual design and the vernacular of the vessel tradition that hovers between pottery and sculpture. Students that are intimidated by the wheel-throwing process are encouraged by the sectional approach’s ability to expand their creative access to larger, more complex, and more visually engaging designs.
As this sectional project emphasizes form over technique, students whose hand skills may lag behind their conceptual skills are encouraged to continue to pursue more and more complex forms in later projects. I also begin to encourage the students to embrace a “by whatever means necessary” approach to solving technical problems with this project which I will later ask them to merge with the principle that technique and form should always be dictated by idea, rather than vice versa.
Neffie’s piece has multiple stacked parts and is a particularly great example of duality in design. Its function is utilitarian as separate parts and becomes sculptural in its stacked format. I also see an interesting connection between the stacked forms vertical growth and repetition and the surface’s similar floral motif. She makes strong use of repetition with form and shape on the surfaces, which contribute to a string sense of overall unity. This work is also a particularly strong example of her talent for design and technique in surface decoration.
Tim Benson
Mission Hills High School
Neffie Torres’s piece titled, “Stacked Jars” was generated by a Sectional Vessel project in my Advanced Ceramics class at Mission Hills High School in the San Marcos Unified School District. The students in this class are grades 10-12 and are in their 2nd through 4th year of working with clay. The material focus of the class is predominantly clay, but students are welcome to bring in other materials and found objects when their project ideas warrant it.
The assignment involves an exploration of simple wheel-thrown forms as potential components in larger and more complex compositions. I show the students the works of Peter Volkous, Don Reitz, and Val Cushing and numerous others that employ a range of approaches to creating complex vessels from multiple component parts. This is also a project in which design and planning are particularly emphasized as they are critical to the efficient use of time and having the necessary parts from which to build larger pieces. Students must employ math and measurements in calculating shrinkage and measurements for forms that need to fit together later. Students must also grapple with mass, gravity and the physical limitations of clay as a material as well as the structural limitations of particular forms, curves and support structures.
Conceptually, students are asked to envision and critically think through the design process on paper before beginning to build. Asked to initially sketch multiple preliminary designs, students are then asked to use comparative judgement and to verbally justify their decisions in the language of three dimensional visual design and the vernacular of the vessel tradition that hovers between pottery and sculpture. Students that are intimidated by the wheel-throwing process are encouraged by the sectional approach’s ability to expand their creative access to larger, more complex, and more visually engaging designs.
As this sectional project emphasizes form over technique, students whose hand skills may lag behind their conceptual skills are encouraged to continue to pursue more and more complex forms in later projects. I also begin to encourage the students to embrace a “by whatever means necessary” approach to solving technical problems with this project which I will later ask them to merge with the principle that technique and form should always be dictated by idea, rather than vice versa.
Neffie’s piece has multiple stacked parts and is a particularly great example of duality in design. Its function is utilitarian as separate parts and becomes sculptural in its stacked format. I also see an interesting connection between the stacked forms vertical growth and repetition and the surface’s similar floral motif. She makes strong use of repetition with form and shape on the surfaces, which contribute to a string sense of overall unity. This work is also a particularly strong example of her talent for design and technique in surface decoration.
