Art is dancing with your senses.
All senses are important end each of them brings something more and different into an experience. None of the senses is more important than the other ones. Why do I only take photos and play music then? They only cover 2 of the senses.
This module of 3D Studies and Primary art Educator has been an adventure to the 3rd sense – touch. Touch normally is a part of my everyday life in crafts. I knit everywhere and all the time: in lectures, in a coach, during therapy sessions, at home, at friends', on picnic... But I don't count the knitting I do as art. It is just making everyday items (well, I could write another essay of 'what do I think is art'). One of my favourite crafts is felting, and when I felt, I make art. For me the most important part of arts is not the final piece, even though I want it to be perfect. The perfectionist inside me is trying to kill the best part – the making itself, which has a big role especially in making 3D art. In art school I learned to love finishing as an important part of the process. Taking a piece of art to another level through finishing took me to the experience of flow. I learned to love finishing so much that I couldn't stop it and I started to feel like my pieces were never finished.
I have done visual arts a lot since I was three years old and attended Basic Education in Arts in Finland first time. I started it years younger than others and I was the youngest one in the group through the school. I learned to look critically my pieces of art younger than others. Probably I was too young for that, and I got too strict to myself. After I had finished the syllabus of Basic Education in Arts, I attended painting and graphics workshops for some years. I made what I was asked to make, but didn't really enjoy it. There were too many rules and too much pressure to succeed so I couldn't feel the freedom of having a play. I've been through many different feelings of doing arts and the pressure I set on myself made me quit for a number of years. I hadn't done any arts but photography for a while before coming here. However, the richness of making art is in its unperfectioness and how it always offers something new. You never can be good enough, no-one can say where's the perfect. You only can exceed yourself and get the feeling of success.
This module offered me a lot; something that I didn't like at all before (ceramics), some new experiences with a material I normally enjoy to work with (willow), and something I had never tried before (all the mold making).
We started the module with a presentation of the theme: sphere. I don't know if it was because of my limited understanding of English or what, but I didn't get why the theme was chosen. I had been concentrating in Finnish artists and in that session I heard of many new ones – but why sphere? Well, making an inspiration board of sphere was a good experience as I dived into the history of Finnish design and found those my old favourite Eero Aarnio objects and Artek again. I got stuck in Finnish design and collected pictures of the most beautiful objects. I started to look them differently and really found the beauty of those simple shapes.
Willow
The first session with willow was interesting as I thought there was something wrong with me. I had a good plan what to make and how to make it, but I just couldn't work it out. Bending willow had never been as difficult before! When I realized everyone else were struggling with it too, I gave up and took it easy. There was nothing wrong with me but with the willow. Natural materials are not always as they should be and you need to be felxible with that fact - this time we had to make a huge change of plans and make big spheres in groups instead. It was good experience to work with people I didn't know before because I normally work on my own or with people who I know really well and who have similar understanding of aestethics as I do. I had to accept the fact that the final piece won't look like how it would if it was made just by myself. It looked like the group.
Clay
After the frustration that thinking about ceramics caused in the beginning I started to enjoy it. Sitting there alone (the own space as a part of the experience), listening live music (brass orchestra practising downstairs) and burnishing half-dried clay, feeling the cool roughness and softness of the clay in my fingertips, and just being there surrounded with the warm welcoming smells of the arts class which I learned to love here moved something inside me. I felt like I had found something I had been missing. When pictures are something to see and music something to listen, ceramics is something to touch and smell as much as wool and felting. I used to dislike clay because I didn't know how to work with it. On those evening hours sitting there alone I realized it doesn't really matter, clay itself will teach you with time. More important for me was the feeling of belonging somewhere. Maybe it was because I felt like homeless here in Plymouth - my apartment didn't feel welcoming, and working with clay was a good excuse not to go home. I don't know. I only know I learned that clay can be your friend even though it has its limits when working with it. I learned how long I can work with it, when to leave it dry and when not let it happen, how it shrinks when getting dry, and what happens when attaching fres moist clay to half dried.
I spent hours and hours with the chain link I made and burnished, and was happy with the outcome, and then something went wrong with glazing. First reaction was that I hope I'll never see it again. The perfectionist inside me was rising its head telling me I had failed but this time I didn't want to listen it. I sat down and tried figure out what had gone wrong - I only got some questions but not any answers. Maybe it was the combination of the clay and the glazing I had chosen. I tried to tell myself it wasn't ruined - life only had treated it badly. It happens to every creature in the world: to those who are alive and who are not. I tried to save what I could, got something fixed and something not. That was all I could do, and at least I didn't give up before trying and I am happy of that. Giving up is not something I that sounds like my reaction.
In the end of the module I finally tried out the potter's wheel which I had been so afraid of. I felt like I had found my way to work with clay. Sitting there and getting my hands and arms all covered in slip – I could spend hours there, and I am really sorry I didn't have a go before. I had been listening and watching others trying it too much and was afraid of failing or getting disappointed of my abilities. Beforehand I thought I may not be able to even center the lump of clay not to mention raising the walls. Once I sat there and let myself make mistakes, I realized I know how clay acts on a wheel - I only have to learn to feel it better to make pots. No one was born to be a master, it takes time to become one. I just have to find a potter's wheel back home and one day I'll be able to throw a beautiful pot.
Making molds
All the mold making methods were new for me. First I made a plaster mold of my fist which I found very interesting way to work. Alginate was all new material for me, I hadn't even heard of it before. Tin foil and sticky tape molding were such experiences as well. Getting wrapped myself was something I could recommend to everyone brave enough. I think I missed something important as I only was as a model but didn't try to make one whole body myself, but I surely will try one later. I want to find out how to make the structure strong enough and what are the limitations and potentials of the material.
Karoliina Liukko
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