You either know these forms as a consumer, or as a service-worker. In the restaurant industry, they're prolific. They come in three sizes---quart, pint, & cup---and we use them for everything. Perfect for when you freeze a big batch of something and only need a couple of pints pulled out at a time; perfect as a reliable measurement device; perfect for taking catering leftovers home in, leading to an accumulation of an unknown number of containers that you only realize has grown so large when you start to run low at work. I know someone who uses them at home as drinking glasses. Many consumers take their deli soups home in these and throw them out afterward, not realizing that they're endlessly reusable (we only get rid of them when they break!). 

When I was tasked with creating sculpture from a found "waste" plastic, these omnipresent forms were the first thing that came to my mind. For those who work with them every day, the sensory experience is imprinted in their brains---what they feel like, how flexible they are, the sound they make when dropped, that time they cut their finger when taking the lid off of one because the rim was chipped, or that time ham glaze dripped all over the walk-in because the container they put it in had a barely visible crack. If you work with these, you will immediately recognize them in this sculpture, which maybe isn't the point of the sculpture, but it's all I could think about while making it.

This piece is considered soft sculpture---in this case, one of fabric. I was tasked with completely deconstructing an existing stuffed toy down to each single plane of fabric, then using those materials to construct a completely new form. I had done reflective writings for the project both before and after the deconstruction/reconstruction, which sum up what there is to say about the piece:

Before

The toy I chose is unusual. It looks homemade, and since nothing turns up with a reverse image search, it’s not unlikely that it is. If not properly “homemade,” it at least feels one of a kind, made by hand locally wherever it was sold---whoever made it, they appear to have signed it (in cursive), so it’s at the very least not something that was mass-produced. Its fabric is shiny like nylon, and stitched to have a rough surface. Its stuffing is stiff and heavy, and it seems to have dilapidated over the years to where its joints can no longer support it, causing it to slump under its own weight when sat upright. It’s clear by its webbed feet that it's meant to represent an amphibian, though its color and humanoid features make it an unrealistic representation, and muddy whether it's meant to be a frog or a toad. 

It's wearing a bowtie and holding a white flower, so it may have been made to commemorate an occasion—a wedding, a birthday, or, perhaps morbidly, a funeral. It also looks and feels very old, not only because of its physical qualities, but also because of what I assume to be its context---I don’t think that hand-crafting a stuffed toy as a gift or to commemorate an occasion has been a common practice over the last twenty years or so, so this toy feels like it must have come from at least as long ago as the 90s, but possibly as long ago as the 70s. It has a somber aura to it---it looks dead by the way it’s slumped over, and the fact that it was donated away presumably by the family who received it (or perhaps in the disbursement of a passed family member’s belongings) gives a feeling of abandonment, of the tossing away of something crafted with love and care.

After

My concept for this piece came from a desire to preserve parts of the “frog” subject of the original toy, while altering it in such a way that drastically changes its context---a viewer might be able to guess from its recognizable features (shape of a frog leg, webbed feet) that the piece is a transformation of a frog, but instead of considering what it used to look like, they might consider why or how the frog as taken this form. The process began as a practice of seeing how I could manipulate the stuffed toy to satisfy design tastes of my own---such as with skewed lines, revolution around a point, and asymmetry---but I was eventually taken by imagining the final composition as a spacey, uncanny transformation of a frog. What cosmic spaghettification happened to this frog to make it look like this? Is this what a frog would look like in the 4th dimension? Is this the universe’s perfect form of a frog?

A major focus of my analysis of the original toy was its somber implications---I couldn’t separate from the idea that the toy was made with love, and then was lost or cast away. I considered how it might have been special both to the person who made it and the person who received it, and felt a weight around the fact that with all of its unknown history, its path took it to end up as a project material in my hands. Because it had been separated from its purpose, it needed a new one in order to remain special to an individual, and it had fallen on me to manufacture that purpose. While its new form is perhaps leagues away from the cheery representation that it once was, it’s been revitalized to once again be relevant to somebody, now inhabiting a context much different from the bottom of the storage bin that it likely came from.

A sculpture made from four bristol board planes constructed by slotting and piercing the separate planes together---an academic work for a foundational 3D studio class. The hatch-cuts aim to give the sculpture interesting interactions with surrounding light, and to demonstrate movement as the space between the lines of multiple planes (seeing through multiple planes to the background) changes as you move around its different viewing angles.

The original conception for this piece was to make a sculpture of a wasp at such an unrealistic scale that it inspired the “heebie-jeebies.” A wasp, foreboding enough on its own, would certainly reach another level of horror when scaled to the size of a housecat. But before it even touched the kiln, I had the idea to instead apply a more otherworldly color scheme, with a psychedelic vibrancy that inspired more a feeling of wonder than of fear (though some still found the form foreboding). The “candy” part came from the observation that combined with the bright colors, the sheen of the glaze-finish was reminiscent of hard candy.

Made out of love for my favorite Hendrix album, Rainbow Bridge. "Pali Gap" is the title of an incredible instrumental track on the record---a contender for my favorite Hendrix song. The swirly design emanating from the needle of the turntable represents the music, with the colors mirroring those of the album's sleeve. Both the location of the needle on the record, and the rotation of the center label, correspond to the exact location and rotation where Pali Gap begins playing on the vinyl.

During the glazing process for this set, I brushed wax directly onto my hands and applied them to the pieces before dipping. A simple process for a simple effect, but they feel special to me for their personality---after all, they're my hands!

A set of four basic mini-pots with companion saucers. They're each no more than three inches in diameter---just the right size for cute succulent plants. The hatched lines were created by cutting masking tape into thin strips to apply before dipping.

The form of this pot is based on a common ancient Greek vase called an aryballos. Aryballos were made to store perfumes and oils for daily use, and were often tied to the belt of the user via a small loop or handle at the top (this piece is much, much larger than the average aryballos of ancient Greece, and has more in common with their vessels used to store wine, olive oil, or water). Hand-built entirely with coils---except for the disc-top, which was cut from a slab. The surface design is generic, meant to capture the spirit and color of the Proto-Corinthian era (c. 775 - c. 600 bce) of ancient Greek pottery---though the juxtaposition of a snake eating the tail of another is a subtle foray into the visual storytelling that can be found on much of their ancient stoneware.