http://www.catherinecheek.com artblog and writing resume Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:13:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This is the second core formed vessel I made in Laurie Nessel's workshop at the Mesa Art Center I had an idea of making a vessel that was whorled and striped like the planet Jupiter.  The ivory came out brighter in contrast to the red than I had anticipated, and ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/03/11/core-formed-vessel-jupiter/ I made this at a special workshop taught at the Mesa Arts Center by Laurie Nessel.  Now I've made vessels with both lampworking and borosilicate techniques, as well as in the hot shop.  In some ways, this is the easiest, but it is by no means the fastest.  Also, unlike ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/03/08/blue-green-core-formed-vessel/ This is the second of the Butterfly tiles. I used a photograph of an American Painted Lady as a reference. I learned from my faerie dolls that butterfly wings done from memory don't usually look good, unless the artist is also a student of butterflies. On this one I used the ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/03/05/butterfly-tile-2/ I bought some glaze/paste called "French Impressions" by Duncan that I hoped would create the same effect as the tinted slip trail, yet not have to be done at the greenware stage.  The bottle said nothing about whether it had to be done under or over the glaze, so I ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/03/02/butterfly-tile-1/ Finally got my kiln working, and was able to glaze some of the tiles I'd made last year (or was it two years ago?)  I had the idea of basing some tiles off of the Tarot, because Tarot cards are defined enough to provide concrete parameters, yet still have room ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/02/27/ace-of-pentacles-tile/ http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/02/24/smiley-ball-15/ For this book cover, I started with orange printed calico over paper, and again did Rorschach-like blobs of black gesso on it.  I wanted to try a photo transfer onto colored paper, so I chose a blue square with brown seedpods printed on it.  The transfer worked fairlywell, and I ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/02/21/bellisima-book/ For the cloth of this book, I used thin, rainbow tie-dyed cotton.  I added black gesso just as I did to the other two books in this series.  Again I wanted to experiment with photo transfers, so I transferred the images of a poritco (front cover) and gate (back cover) ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/02/18/portal-book/ I began this book by putting black gesso on to some printed calico in what I hoped were random patches.  Once that was done, a book on photo transfers inspired me to attempt to transfer a photo. I found a photo of a landscape, and transferred it onto the cloth ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/02/15/poem-book/ I originally made the base of this as a drum for my husband.  I made two, actually, but this one had too-shallow of a shape, so he said he wasn't going to use it. I decided, that since I've been planning to make a fountain for a while, that I ... http://www.catherinecheek.com/2010/02/12/fountain/